■,.r. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



®|it{t. iupijrig^t !f 0* 

Shelf ...Gt.1.3 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






'i^;: 




si-^ 



,iMi 



"«"% 



W. 



1^' 



1^ I i i NINETEENTH 

CENTURY SENSE: I i 
BEING THE PARADOX OF SPIR- 
ITUS SANCTUS AND OF ROSI- 
CRUCIANISM. 1^ 1^ BY J. E. 
'<^ GARRETSON, M.D. (JOHN DARBY). 



SECOND EDITION. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

1893. 



\ 






Copyright, 1887, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 



Copyright, 1892, by J. B. I^ippincott Company. 



Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. 



'* A man that looks on glass 
On it may stay his eye, 
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, 
And the heavens espy.'* 



PARADOXES. 



Mention of paradoxes affords both definition of the 
book and idea of its contents. 

Judgment and Understanding existing with Nine- 
teenth-Century Sense are entirely one with inductions 
reached by Rosicrucian speculations. 

Freedom from doubt is one with Spiritus Sanctus. 

Nothing is what it seems to be. 

Common Sense is little better than No Sense. 

Now is one with Eternity. 

To-day is identical with all days. 

Supernatural is not different from natural. 

Heaven and hell are a common location. 

* ' Hie jacet * ' is not fact. 

A buried man is an unburied one. 

Death is the same as life. 

The Soul of man is one with God. 

Man is girl, boy^ bushj bird, and fish, yet is neither 
of these. 



Dedication is to the Garretsonian Society. 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 



I. 



" Men do not know themselves, and therefore they do not under- 
stand the things that are in their inner world. Each man has the 
essence of God, and all the wisdom and power of the world (ger- 
minally) in himself; he possesses one kind of knowledge as much as 
another, and he who does not find that which is in him cannot truly 
say that he does not possess it, but only that he was not capable of 
successfully seeking it." 

Sight of ships by him who cultivates ships, sight of 
poems by him who cultivates poetry, sight of scores 
by him who cultivates music, sight of the Divinity by 
him who cultivates the divine, — sight of none of these 
by him who cultivates none of them. 

Striving after understanding of the universal and of 

man's relation with it. Seeking a sanctuary where 

higher dominates lower. Reaching comprehension 

that for a beast, whether man or brute, there is the 
grass under its nose, nothing else; that for an '^ al- 
chemist" there is gold ; that for the '^ immortal" there 
are cosmetics, if not indeed a liquor adolescentiae and 

7 



8 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

an elixir vitse; that an "Illuminate" may reach and 
eat of the fruit that grows in the " midst of the gar- 
den;" eating of this fruit, and growing through the 
eating, until growth reaches whither growth leads. 

Recognizing, with Paracelsus, that the beginning of 
wisdom is the beginning of supernatural power ; and 
with Ovid, that things alter, that nothing dies ; and 
with Empedocles, that man is in truth one with bird, 
beast, and fish; and with Plato, that he is one with 
none of these things. Able to read the paradox of 
'*hic jacet" in understanding that here he who lies is 
not he who lies but he who lies not. 

Above all things recognizing oneness in Now and 
Eternity. 

Freed of all confusion in understanding that duty 
and responsibility rest and relate with the Now, and 
with the Now alone. 

Comprehending, out of understanding, with Zoro- 
aster, that for a man to know himself is to know all 
things necessary for him to know in himself. 

Recognizing, with Socratists, that correspondence 
between analysis and synthesis corrects imperfections 
as to judgments existing in defects of senses and 
reason. 

Accepting, with Epicurus, that pursuit of pleasure 
is the highest wisdom. 

Considering man in his relation to himself and to 
the universal. God, the devil, celestial and terrestrial. 
Occult and open. The bigness of littleness and the 
littleness of bigness. The strength and the weakness, 
the mortality and the immortality of man. 

Being brought into a state of profound content, 



ROSICRUCIAN EXCLUSIONS. 9 

through comprehension. Recognizing self as a part 
of a universal whole, yet as a something forever sep- 
arate and individual. Recognizing the import of 
universal. 

Getting hold of the meaning of things; rejoicing 
ever with appreciation, enduring never without con- 
solation. Understanding that pleasure and suffering 
are conditions of proper and improper relation. 

Finding truth to be entirely apprehensible. Seeing 
that the real does not conceal nor obscure itself. 
Learning that life is a circle where there are no dark 
corners. Doubting never any more as to the purpose 
of being. Expert as to the office of feet and hands, 
mind and soul. 

Cognizable to the confusions of philosophers in their 
confounding of things. Separating clothes and body 
and body and person. Appreciable of environment. 
Come to understanding that self is one thing and that 
soul is another thing. Having gotten hold of the mean- 
ing of an unpardonable sin in discovering it to be self- 
explaining and self-proving. Satisfied as to the exist- 
ence of God in coming to a sight of Him upon the 
outside and the inside of men. Proving to one's self 
that one's self is God. 

Able to grasp the meaning of an infinite eternity in 
an infinite now. Making nothing at all of the idea 
of an hereafter, knowing the present to be all that has 
been or that can be. 

Comprehending, with Alexandrians, that recognition 
of the infinite means necessarily that the recognizer 
has himself become the infinite. 

Coming, in highest wisdom, to care for nothing or 



lO SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

to think of nothing but the hour that is ; having learned 
that there is nothing else to care for or to think 
about. 

Recognizing that an end reached is according to a 
way taken. 

. Accepting that conformity to law, not violation, in- 
sures most against mishaps. 

Appreciating that good and bad are not things of 
themselves but things of relation. 

Enlarging being by increasing knowledge. Deter- 
mining through the seen the existence of unseen. 
Understanding that the blackness of night is by reason 
of earth turning her back to the sun. Seeing the 
meaning of shadow to lie with light, and that to face 
about is to find the real. Perceiving what is involved 
in the fact that a beast is at its best when living power- 
fully and aggressively for self, and that a man is at his 
worst when so living. Understanding as fact that faith 
can remove mountains : smiling in derision at the idea 
of faith being able to remove anything : learning what 
faith is. Opening an enigma that both teaches and 
denies the existence of an overruling Providence. 
Finding out what alone will hold up when one leans 
against it. 

Deriding the doctrine of a resurrection while being 
able to prove it true. Seeing a cocoon and a coffin to 
be alike; that the way to a butterfly is through a worm. 
Apprehending what is meant by a body terrestrial and 
a body celestial. Getting out of experimentation the 
differentiations of materializations and dematerializa- 
tions. Smiling at the embalming of Egyptians and at 
the burying of Christians ; knowing the law of matter. 



ROSICRUCIAN EXCLUSIONS. n 

Not at all confused in accepting self to be the same 
self forever, holding at the same time with Pythagoras 
that he was Euphorbus of the Trojan war, and that, 
with Empedocles, he had lived as boy, girl, beast, bird, 
and fish. 

Listening to complaints of unanswered prayers; as- 
tonished at the profundity of an ignorance which 
wastes time in prayer. Seeing a nation turned idiots 
asking for life of king or president. Hearing the 
preacher begging for rain and the preacher pleading 
for drouth. Regarding generals who, in opposite places, 
entreat for success to side in sectional and fraternal 
strife. Compelled to rebuke prayer, yet yourself 
hourly praying and never failing to receive answer to 
prayer. 

Rosicrucianism, standing in the light of the nine- 
teenth century, possessed of the immortal elixir, re- 
peating, mockingly, ** O Grave ! where is thy victory? 
O Death ! where is thy sting ?' * Standing by the bedside 
of one who struggles to break the environment, seeing 
nothing different from a locust casting its shell, the 
wakeful going into a dream, or a birth of higher 
evolving itself from one of lower signification ; know- 
ing as simple change of association what others call 
death. 

A door shut and fast locked against the confusion 
of outside things \ yourself seated in meditative mood, 
listening to an inner voice and working at the opening 
of paradoxes; yourself profoundly content in what you 
have learned yourself to be, yet full of commiseration 
for afflictions endured by others. Asking yourself as 



12 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

to why and wherefore and as to distinctions and differ- 
ences. Knowing what is the province and what is not 
the province of senses and reason. Awake to a light 
shining out of spiritual illumination. Having learned 
the source of instruction and where to apply for under- 
standing. 

Rich in absence of possessions. Healthy when 
weighed down by disease. Alive in death. 

A believer in ghosts and demons ; yourself a maker 
and dispeller of things occult and mysterious. Your- 
self knowing yourself as maker of heaven and hell; 
yourself your own god and your own devil, and a god 
or devil to other people. Yourself brute beast or 
divine uplifter. Yourself able to reach to the antipo- 
des or bound to a spot. Yourself having learned that 
there is neither forward nor backward, looking at that 
which alone is. Yourself overwhelmed in considera- 
tion of the dead ear of Christ. Yourself finding a 
horn in your hand to call Christ to his office. Your- 
self alive to the existence of a wall that separates 
prayer and answer. Yourself having discovered self 
to be Christ. Yourself the resurrected Christ. 

Coming at last to understand the oneness of pro- 
found and simple. Coming at last to rest in absolute 
tranquillity. 



THE ROSICRUCIANS. 



II. 



13 



ABOUT SPIRITUS SANCTUS AND THE 
ROSICRUCIANS. 

"The philosophy of one generation becomes the common sense 
of the next." 

A RosiCRUCiAN is nothing more uncommon than that 
the word Inquirer stands as his synonyme. 

Spiritus Sanctus means to a Rosicrucian Refuge from 
Doubt as refuge lies with understanding. It means also 
to him Sacred Spirit as final refuge. 

Using the word Rosicrucian, a word somewhat un- 
familiar to modern ears, instead of philosopher, or 
inquirer, in connection with the dissections and exam- 
inations of the present pages is assumed as justified and 
commendable in introduction afforded by it to a class 
of thinkers who evolved clearness out of obscurity 
and highest out of lowest. Any name implying people 
that think for themselves and who want to find out 
about things may be put, if preferred, in the place of 
Rosicrucian ; the name is to imply, however, a closer 
than the ordinary observer. 

History. — Appreciation of Rosicrucianism is en- 
trance, and the only entrance, upon the way of devel- 
opment j this is one with saying that cultivation of 
what a man finds to be his capability constitutes the 
glory and success of the man. 

Rosicrucianism is questioning life. Christian Ro- 



14 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

senkreuz, whose name finds association with a large 
class of such questioners, was a German noble, who, 
as he grew into years, developed wonderful inclina- 
tion toward meditative and speculative studies. He 
is to be pronounced a born metaphysician. To 
appreciate the character of this representative indi- 
vidual, and through him that which is represented as a 
guild which has the peculiar reputation of being every- 
where and yet nowhere, is to start with an assumption 
that his philosophical career commenced at the basis 
of the Ionian school, which basis is understood as ac- 
cepting the composition of all things as lying with one 
or with a combination of four elementary bodies: the 
particular one, according to the teachings of the 
founder of the school, Thales, being water; according 
to Anaximenes, a close successor, air; according to 
Heraclitus, fire; according to Empedocles, things at 
large being existent in a mingling and then a separa- 
tion of the mingled ; this flux lying with earth. 

Here, where the studies of Rosenkreuz commenced, 
begin, necessarily, the investigations of every man 
who is to find out the meaning of himself and his re- 
lation with the universal. Rosicrucianism, in its high- 
est and best sense, signifies material, soulistic, and in- 
tellectual evolution ; and evolution, after this manner, 
implies the student life. A Rosicrucian, come to the 
order of what is called an illuminatus, or an illuminated 
man, means one who has himself become, in a sense, 
God. Such a man comes naturally and necessarily to 
be esteemed singular by his fellows, and it is strange if 
this singularity possess him not with the reputation of 
laboring under hallucination. Rosicrucians are divided 



THE ROSICRUCIANS. 1 5 

into alchemists, immortales, and the class illurainati 
just alluded to. 

Rosicrucianism, individualized, differs nothing, as far 
as the fourteenth century is concerned, from what it is 
found to be in the nineteenth. Alchemy is in a sense 
the start-point. Alchemy proposes to itself the trans- 
muting of lead into gold and the crystallization of 
morning dew into diamonds. 

Riches, in the shape of precious metal and jewels, 
is the ultima thule of young manhood, just as cleared 
ground upon which to grow bread is that of a young 
and pioneer colony. Rosenkreuz, while almost a boy, 
conceived the possibility of acting on the premise of 
Empedocles in compelling gold and diamonds to show 
what they are through analysis, arguing that as they 
are neither earth, fire, air, nor water, the composition 
must lie in some union of these supposed elements, 
there being nothing else in which it could lie. It was 
an intrinsic deduction that analysis might be dupli- 
cated, or conversed, by synthesis; hence, to find out 
what is the composition of a thing is to possess one's 
self with the power to make the thing. 

Here is inauguration of the day of alembics and of 
the occult of the alchemists. It will be felt as nat- 
ural, and as akin with the selfishness of men, that 
crucibles should be set up in hidden places, and that 
experimenters, in pursuit of a great secret, should grow 
recluse and mystic. This mars a page in the history 
of the master. 

Failing in his own laboratory, Rosenkreuz passed 
from the environments of his home to live with the 
traditions of Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Gymnoso- 



1 6 SFIRITUS SANCTUS. 

phists, and it is averred that here, aided by his own 
analytical genius, he did in truth learn how to make 
sun-gold and dew-diamonds. Out of this developed, 
in turn, the "Fratres Roris Coctus," brothers of con- 
cocted dew. 

Succeeding naturally the alchemists come the im- 
mortales. Bread is nothing without time and appetite 
to eat it; much less are gold and diamonds to him who 
finds no days left him in which to spend. The al- 
chemist grew quickly into the most unenviable of men. 
Lacking one thing, all else was counted as nothing. 
Gold was had, but Fate had the alchemist. The need 
was time, — time and eternal youth. Metamorphosis 
was absolute. Alchemy revived under a new name 
and with a new aim. Again the fires of laboratories 
in hidden places were lighted. Men, old and bowed 
with anxiety, were to be met searching beneath the 
trees and carrying from the fields bundles of exogens 
too heavy for their bent backs to bear up. The waters 
of springs were analyzed. Journeys long and formid- 
able were endured, not unlike the search recorded of 
Ponce de Leon, or that infinitely more dangerous one, 
the expedition of Jason to Colchis for the recovery of 
the "Golden Fleece." The search was for an Elixir 
Vitse ; at first for more than this, for a Liquor Ado- 
lescentise. Exhaustion begotten of effort was succeeded 
by renewed eff*ort and further exhaustion. Always on 
the verge of a grand discovery, the immortales one by 
one fell palsied and fainting into their boiling cal- 
drons, or were overcome by fumes which poisoned 
them 5 this, or they lay down by the waysides ; other- 
wise, as is recorded by the vulgar, were caught up and 



THE ROSICRUCIANS. 17 

carried away by devils and genii. The story is simply 
one of history repeating itself; Menedemus trying to 
revive his failing body by inhaling the breath of chil- 
dren \ David courting to his enervated frame the lusti- 
ness living with the vigorous youth of Abishag. 

After all, an elixir of life and a liquor of youth were 
found. Avaricious in the pursuit of knowledge, Rosen- 
kreuz acquainted himself with the sublimities of the 
Vedanta philosophy and made himself familiar with the 
Greek schools of Plato and the Alexandrians. Here 
body differentiated itself to his understanding as a 
thing of little significance ; a mere shield-bearer to a 
principal standing within or behind. Ego, Eros-like, 
had arisen, an intangible tangibility; not to be doubted 
as the real existence ; seen and understood as not ca- 
pable of being lessened or heightened or deepened or 
broadened by elixirs ; a something carrying no purse, 
neither possessed of neck nor finger for ornamentation. 
The life and meaning of man were seen to lie with 
Ego. Body was recognized to be external. 

Few of the misunderstandings of men are more 
curious and unexplainable than misconceptions con- 
cerning the Rosicrucians. In a worm-eaten encyclo- 
paedia, which has descended in the writer's family 
through the generations of two hundred yfears, Rosi- 
crucians are described as an hermetical cabal, who 
appeared, or at least were first taken notice of, in the 
beginning of the sixteenth century ; professors of se- 
crets whose principal idea was a philosopher's stone, a 
sect of fanatics at whose head, in England, stood 
Robertus de Fluctibus, and, in Germany, Jacob Behmen 

and Michael Mayer. Concerning Behmen, or rather 
b 2* 



1 8 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Boehm, the most modern biographical dictionaries 
perpetuate the crudity of Hallam in writing of his 
supernatural illuminations as lacking in the power of 
transferring a light to others, quite overlooking the 
fact that uncouched cataractous eyes cannot see. 
Here language will be wisely slightly changed to ac- 
cord Rosicrucianism better with what is to follow. 
While, during any period between the fourteenth 
century and the present hour, a band of workers 
interested in chemical pursuits may have taken as a 
society name that of a master in the art, and while it 
very well may be that Rosenkreuz himself organized 
such a band and retired with fellow-workers to unravel 
such mysteries as lie with the composition of gold and 
diamonds (surmising, not unlikely, what modern chem- 
istry seems never to think of, namely, that elements 
are no elements at all, being simply phenomena arising 
out of and going back into a primary or noumenon, 
which, had Empedocles named it matter, instead of 
earth, would be recognized to comprise all that the 
science of the present day knows of the abstract) ; yet 
here is simply provisional association, and not, as 
surmised by some, a secret and continued order, as, 
for example, that of Freemasonry, with which, in the 
estimation of many, Rosicrucianism is more or less 
identical. 

It is not at all to be denied that savants, called 
Rosicrucians, used language not fully understood by 
those unfamiliar with their nomenclature; thus the 
writer of an article in an English encyclopaedia says 
of them, out of such misunderstanding, ''In fine, the 
Rosicrucians, and all their fanatical descendants^ 



THE ROSICRUCIANS, 19 

agree in proposing the most crude and incomprehen- 
sible notions and ideas in the most obscure, quaint, 
and unusual expressions." Let this criticism be meas- 
ured by the language of the present chemistry when 
compared with names and terms familiar to the popular 
ear. A chemist prefers request to fellow-chemist for 
HNO3 or HSO^, meaning by these symbols to ask for 
nitric or sulphuric acid, — symbols full of meaning to 
the inquirer, empty entirely of sense to the unlearned. 

There is a closely-printed little volume entitled 
"Apologia Compendiaria Fraternitatis de Rosea 
Cruce," written by Robertus de Fluctibus in reply to 
strictures appearing against Rosicrucians during the 
time of Charles I. and the Protector, which, although 
I have never seen it, I feel sure is entirely familiar 
to me in its contents. This is so predicated because 
true learning leads but in one direction, and Robert 
Fludd was learned. Perhaps full expression is given 
of this in a quotation from Jennings, who refers to 
Shelley as one who if he had not been so great a poet 
would perhaps have been equally eminent as a meta- 
physician, — that is, when age and experience, as he 
puts it, had ripened and corrected original brilliant 
crudities of thought, — a constant declaration being 
upon the poet's tongue to the effect that most men, at 
least most thinking men, spend the latter half of their 
life in unlearning the mistakes of the preceding half. 
I know this English Rosicrucian as an illuminatus and 
not as an alchemist. There was but one way for him to 
write, and that I may be sure is the way of his pages. 

The alchemy of the sixteenth century was simply the 
infancy of the chemistry of the present day. Is it 



20 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

not known that chemistry is a worker of natural 
miracles? Are there not found coming out of the 
crucibles daily things richer than are to be compared 
with gold and diamonds ? 

Alchemy is and was material, so also is and was 
man's body material. Out of the glasses and furnaces 
and crucibles came a genius, which, under the name 
EXCLUSION,* is found to be a light which illuminates 
remote and near, the physical and the metaphysical. 
By and through a use of this process of exclusion, 
immortales developed into illuminati. 

Recognition of the fact that the body is external is 
the meaning of illumination, and this, in turn, is the 
true and whole meaning of an illuminatus. To attain 
to consciousness of a tripartite nature as belonging to 
man, is to get above accidents as it is to be above 
concern. Body is matter. Ego is intangible, im- 
mortal, and unchanging individuality; nothing in 
nature can hit or hurt it : the bag of human bones may 
be beaten, but Nicocreon cannot pound Anaxarchus. 
Soul comes to be understood out of recognition of 
matter and Ego ; and so, as Zoroaster first asserted, 
" He who knows himself, knows all things in himself." 

In every sect are people who are of it, and in it, 
by name only. What the confused thoughts and 
writings of an alchemist are to the perceptions of him 
who has advanced to the state of an illuminatus, so, 
and nothing different, are the perplexities of modern 
spiritists to the illuminations of a subjectist; noth- 



* Knowing what a thing is by knowing what it is not. 



THE ROSICRUCIANS, 2i 

ing is hidden save to him who cannot open ; darkness 
to one is light to another. 

Ultimate of illumination is knowledge of the fact 
that Ego, even while in the body, may live a life of 
its own independent of it, hence knowledge of the 
fact of spiritual existence and proof obtained through 
the intercourse with Ego. 

Knowledge of Ego exists in understanding of hy- 
postases. 

Referring back to the opening suggestion of this 
chapter that *' a synonyme of Rosicrucian is Inquirer," 
the reader will wisely pause to consider as to whither 
inquiry may or will lead. It certainly is agreed to by 
everybody that inquiry is a thing of many directions, 
and that men go according to a direction taken. Some 
go after gold, some after medicine, others after other 
things. The first correspond, as implied, with the al- 
chemists, the second with the immortals. The others, 
being a limited number, a very limited number, go 
after Wisdom ; these correspond with the " illumi- 
nates;" they live in the refuge. 

Something is to be added. Reason for using the 
word Rosicrucian is not alone that introduction is af- 
forded thinkers, but that unfamiliar may introduce un- 
familiar, so many of the subjects considered not being 
germane to every-day common-sense living ; while to 
begin a book with what is to show itself as the text of 
this one — namely, * ' Common sense is little better than 
no sense'' ^ — is wisely to secure to one's support wisdom 
going before, which wisdom plainly enough is to 
show the superiority over common sense of educated 
sense, and the superiority over this ktter of Egoistic 



22 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

sense, and the superiority over this superior of soul 
sense. 

To anticipate. The science of medicine begins its 
study of man at the dissecting-table ; here, too, it 
ends. What is here defined as Rosicrucianism begins 
also with a scalpel, but difference lies with induction. 
A Rosicrucian quickly differentiates that what he cuts 
apart is not man but man's body. Induction discovers 
to him Ego. Further advance exposes to him soul. 

Man discovered to be not one save as three are one, 
that is, not at all what common sense sees him to be, 
Rosicrucianism gets its understanding of the nothing- 
ness of common sense, and goes on with little regard 
to it. 

HYPOSTASES. 

A Rosicrucian approaches the hypostases with full 
appreciation that here and only here is understanding 
of man and of man's relation with the universal; 
having, as his clear proof of this, that requirements 
are ever in accord with capability. Understanding 
hypostases, he knows that he knows as to capability. 
Knowing that he knows as to capability, induction 
solves for him everything else as to what is below, 
above, and around men. He attains certitude. 

Seeking, not the familiar lower, but the unfamiliar 
higher, constitutes searches which an interested reader 
is here invited to pursue with a doctor.* 

* Books leading up to the present one are " Odd Hours of a 
Physician," " Hours with John Darby," " Thinkers and Thinking," 
" Brushland," and " Man and his World." 



UNDERSTANDING OF HYPOSTASES. 23 



III. 



UNDERSTANDING OF HYPOSTASES 
THE FOUNDATION OF KNOWL- 
EDGE. 

" The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, and the 
man said, ' Am I your debtor ?' And the Lord said, ' Not yet ; but 
make the house as clean as you can, and then I will let you a 
better.' " 

" The savage, which is the animal, must be coerced and disciplined 
in order that the man be developed, and the man must be patiently 
cultivated in order to make a wise man, and the wise man must 
be tested and tried if he is to become righteous, and the righteous 
man must have substituted for the animal will the will of God if he 
is to become a saint." 

The quotations find likeness in the mind of a thinker 
with the rounds of a ladder ; lower leading to higher. 
First the house of the brute, then possibility of a bet- 
ter house ; the savage an animal, disciplinary coercion 
for the development of a man out of the savage j later 
the philosopher ; still later the saint. 

Illustrative lines, most expressive and suggestive, are 
as follows : 

" I have climbed to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the 
Past, 
Where I sank with the body at times in the slough of a low 
desire. 
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the man is quiet at last. 
As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height 
that is higher." 



24 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

The chapter here before the reader being founda- 
tional to all that follows, an absolute understanding of 
its subjects is a necessity if interest and profit are to 
carry forward. It is one with definition. Let it not 
be unread or unstudied because of an uninviting aspect. 

With comprehension of Hypostases is ground of 
Certitude ; meaning by hypostases simply the compo- 
nent parts of which anything consists, and meaning by 
certitude that which is irrefutable truth. Hypostases 
introduces, among other things, Holy Ghost. This 
latter term, in its obscurity, repels. It savors of the 
dull sermon. Not, however, does it so savor to a Rosi- 
crucian's understanding of it. To him it is known as 
Summum Bonum. In it he recognizes the meaning of 
that name given by Christians as one with Salvation. 
He comprehends that refusal as to understanding it is 
one with refusal to advance on brute life ; and, on the 
other hand, that with understanding of it is initiation. 

Rosicrucianism, finding itself advanced by reason of 
chemical and general philosophical analyses to under- 
standing, accepts, out of the inductions of such initia- 
tion, that the beginning of that higher knowledge, 
which, once come to, takes of itself hold of the human 
and carries him forward until everything is apprehended 
which relates man with highest and as well Universal, 
lies with recognition of the third of the principles of the 
Greek hypostases, — namely, recognition of the Holy 
Ghost of the Trinity ; denial of the existence of which, 
as later on is to be shown, is possible alone to beasts, 
whether these be of shape like men or like brutes. 
Denial of it is also necessary commission of the unpar- 



UNDERSTANDING OF HYPOSTASES. 25 

donable sin, — a sin, the nature of which, as is also to 
be shown, is self-explaining and self-proving. 

This third principle of the hypostases is essence of 
the meaning of the Brahminical salutation, *'To the 
Divinity that is within you I do homage." It is also 
wholly explanatory of the passage in the Christian 
Bible, reading, **The Kingdom of Heaven is within 
you." 

Holy Ghost is a certitude known by every man, ab- 
solutely , with whom it dwells ^ and not known, possibly, 
where it does not dwell; the principle of knowing lying 
with possession, and of not knowing lying with the 
Alexandrian dianoetic that like is alone capable of 
knowing like, as where sight is absent nothing is seen. 
Knowing Holy Ghost is knowing, necessarily, the exist- 
ence of God. 

The hypostases of God are Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost; this, expressive of severalty in Oneness. In 
the material universe water, ice, moisture are illus- 
trative. 

The hypostases of gods — meaning by this term per- 
fect men — are matter. Ego, Holy Ghost. 

The hypostases of beasts — including in the term all 
men not occupied by the Holy Ghost — are matter and 
Ego. 

Matter. — Matter, of which the bodies of men and 
beasts are alike composed, is that common Something of 
which the earth at large and all things occupying it are 
made up. It is stone, vegetable, and human body, and 
it is human body, vegetable, and stone ; thus back and 
forth forever. It is an entity changing daily, hourly, 
momentarily, its manifestations. It composes to-day 
B 3 



26 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

the whole body of a man, to-morrow it is of the soil 
of a field, another day it is the fruit of a garden, and 
still some other day it is a bird, fish, brute. Matter 
departs from form and gets back into form ; disorgan- 
izing, resurrecting, this forever and forever. What 
loses identity is matter, not form nor Ego : these are 
immortal. Yet may the form of a crab advance to 
that of the perfect apple ; a boy grows into the man. 
The apotheosis of a creeping, crawling, smearing worm 
is a flying, floating, emblazoned butterfly ; the apothe- 
osis of a grain of wheat is a stalk of waving grain; the 
apotheosis of a mortal is a celestial. 

The grain of wheat is known to us in no other sense 
than terrestrial. Materialization, in man, takes on de- 
materialization. Yet is this last not any more mys- 
terious than the other. Form is a mould in which 
matter ensconces itself. There is a density of land 
and a density of water, and still another density of 
air, yet are land, water, and air one. Body occupied 
in the dream state is not less real to its possessor be- 
cause materialized eyes see nothing of it. 

Who can understand? It is easy to understand. 
What apotheosizes is Ego in man and beast, form in 
the lower organizations. 

Ego. Ego in man and in animals at large is one 
with form in wheat, trees, and rocks. Ego is individu- 
ality. The bodies of men and worms break up and 
go whence they came; Ego rehabilitates; the worm 
gets to itself wings and bright colors in compensation 
for the dull garment laid off; man advances to a 
spiritual plane and associations; this last meaning, 
however, nothing diff'erent, as heaven and hell are 



UNDERSTANDING OF HYPOSTASES, 27 

concerned, from what relates with him when in see- 
able form. Self, or Ego, as understood by philoso- 
phers, is that primal of man which is the man; matter 
and Holy Ghost being things of association. It is not 
necessary, in order that men exist, that they have 
bodily form through relation with matter, as this en- 
tity is familiar to a materialized eye ; neither is the 
possession of a soul — meaning by this Holy Ghost — a 
necessity to a human life. 

Holy Ghost. — Everything has office and meaning. 
The office and meaning of a watch is to hold and carry 
around the time of day.- The office and meaning of 
bellowing herds seem to be to furnish meat to men. 
The office and meaning of men are according to the 
man : full intention is likeness and purpose with the 
God. 

Extent of likeness and purpose with God corre- 
sponds with extent in possession by men of the Holy 
Ghost. Like corresponds with nothing but like. The 
God is absent where He is not seen. Watches there 
are that tick-tack, yet which tell never anything as to 
the hours. Herds there are that moulder back into 
dust, having performed no intermediate office. Men 
there are who are born and go away, leaving the mis- 
sion of manhood unaccomplished.* 

As a watch differs practically from a turnip in nothing 
but office, and is nothing better than the vegetable 
when office is not found with it, so men relate with 
beasts or with the God according as Holy Ghost is 
absent or present. As eyes, ears, touch, taste, and 

* See " Man and his World." 



28 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

smell are instruments in men without which the Ego 
cannot act, so, after a not dissimilar manner, men are 
designed as instruments of the God. Means to ends 
is the law everywhere, and the God himself is not 
found to relate differently from this to the world. The 
meaning, then, which separates beasts and men is capa- 
bility on the part of the latter to receive and act in the 
Holy Ghost. Not receiving nor holding is necessarily 
not exhibiting; hence, prayer in presence of a beast 
man results in as little heed as if uttered to a brute 
beast : the commerce of God with men is through men. 

What finally becomes of a watch that refuses to con- 
form with the meaning of its intention? and what 
finally becomes of a fig-tree that will give no fruit ? 

People with whom the Holy Ghost is most abun- 
dantly found are the simple and virtuous ; this, either 
because of the simplicity and virtue, or because these 
beautiful traits are creations of the presence. With 
people self-wise or over-sufficient, with the proud and 
uncharitable, with all who are without understanding 
as to common good being the only good, with him 
who fails to see that gifts are in men as almoners only, 
with the supercilious and malevolent, — with all these the 
Holy Ghost is absent, otherwise so lacking in measure 
as to be incapable of making itself felt. 

The Unpardonable Sin. — Existence of the unpar- 
donable sin is difference between man and brute. 
Appreciation of this by human beings is the matter of 
greatest concern in the whole world. 

A matter of such momentous and stupendous signi- 
fication is to be assumed as no mystery, but as being 
ordered to be self-proving and self-explaining, and 



UNDERSTANDING OF HYPOSTASES. 29 

this is found to be pre-eminently and irrefutably the 
case. Nothing is uncertain ; nothing is lacking. 

Argument. — God and Heaven being identical, ab- 
sence of God is necessarily absence of Heaven. God 
is absent in the dual man by reason of non-occupancy 
of him by the Holy Ghost. The location of the king- 
dom of Heaven being within a man, and Heaven and 
the presence of God being accepted to be one and the 
same thing, it follows that he who has not the Holy 
Ghost as part of his composition is necessarily not of 
Heaven. 

Unpardonable sin associates in no mind with any 
other idea than that of a something which excludes 
from Heaven. What excludes is here understood. It 
is left with men to enter or stay out, — /.^., to permit 
or correct a state of unpardonable sin, — i.e, to be their 
own Heaven- or Hell-makers. The difference between 
a man and a brute lies simply and alone with the capa- 
bility possessed by the former to receive occupancy by 
the Holy Ghost ; no man being a man without this 
capability. A man may refuse such occupancy and 
live a life of fourscore years, a composition simply of 
self and matter ; his nature and being allied in every 
sense with creeping and crawling things. He may, on 
the contrary, enlarge and dedicate himself as a temple 
which throws its doors widely open, and he is entered 
and becomes filled with the Holy Ghost, and thus sub- 
serves material to immaterial ; ego to God. He be- 
comes God, inasmuch as God becomes him. He is in 
Heaven by reason of the oneness of this with what he 
has become. To refuse occupancy by the God, to 
deny him coming to his own, is doing nothing differ- 

3* 



30 SFIRITUS SANCTUS. 

ent from denying or putting away what almost every- 
body seems so anxious to obtain. 

Hell is simply Heaven negated. It is inexpressible 
prescience and mercy on the part of the Creator of 
law that this wonderful thing is the case. Beasts, it is 
inferred, are not made to need or to enjoy place on 
the soulistic plane any more than the inviting and 
mighty hill-sides are designed to prove of delectation 
to fishes. But to man co-occupancy and the glory of 
both Heaven and earth are given. With him is a capa- 
bility to climb, to attain, to enjoy. Here is nothing 
at all mysterious, nothing that belongs exclusively with 
any future state of environment or condition. The 
association is with Now; with every present hour, 
every present moment. To put away the godly and 
spiritual until one finds a new kingdom through the 
outlet of a grave is to come never to anything but 
what a beast is thought to come to ; it is to be as en- 
tirely lacking in conception of Heaven as it is to be 
enlarging understanding of Hell. 

Yet what a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful God, 
Hell existing in relation with mortals simply as a thing 
of contrast ! a multitude, a great multitude, deeming 
flames pleasant. So swine enjoy a trough. 

Argument covering the Universal. — Celestial, or 
dematerialized, body is entirely one with terrestrial, or 
materialized, body. God, the unseeable, is one with 
God, the seeable. 

Matter as tangible and as intangible, God as see- 
able and as unseeable, are self-proving and self-explain- 
ing existences. The One is in all. The All is in one : 



UNDERSTANDING OF HYPOSTASES. 31 

this to the enlightened Rosicrucian, be he Christian 
or heathen. The process of exclusion lies strictly 
with analysis: it is to find out what a thing is by 
finding out what it is not. The term Hypostases is 
simply a sound if inner meaning remain undiscovered. 

Finding out where God is and how he is, and finding 
out where Matter is and how it is, and what man's 
relations are with God and what with Matter, this is 
covering the full circle of Rosicrucian illumination. 
The circle of an Illuminate is not, however, the begin- 
ning of a mark which, in its perfected state, is to con- 
stitute the circle: higher rests upon lower, attenuated 
upon dense, soulistic upon earthy; the road to a 
mountain's top is by means of footsteps begun at its 
base. Rosicrucianism, having discovered that every- 
thing is explainable to him who keeps himself in the 
way of explanation, will accept nothing or have nothing 
but what, like his sun-gold, shall pass current through 
the tests of the metallurgist. " There are phenomena," 
says the Rosicrucian, "and these are beheld every- 
where, and under all kinds of form and manner. Is 
phenomenon one with effect ? Is an effect a thing in 
itself? What is an effect or phenomenon? If an 
effect is not a thing in itself, it arises out of something 
back of it. What is the something?" 

None save the simple — otherwise the peculiarly en- 
dowed and highly favored, especially as this doubting 
nineteenth century is concerned — come to conceptions 
residing with Induction, save as the genuine Rosicru- 
cian finds himself afforded such rich and beautiful pos- 
sessions j that is, being influenced through things which 
are as steps leading to the Spiritus Sanctus. A first 



32 



SFIRITUS SANCn/S, 



step to a Rosicrucian is his first experience in analysis. 
A first lesson to an illiterate man is, not unlikely, his 
first sight of a phosphorescent hand moving through 
darkness independently of apparent agency. 

Nineteenth-century people are not very simple 
people; they certainly are not peculiarly nor specially 
endowed soulistically ; they have come, however, to an 
intelligence that needs to have reasons associated with 
faith ; and if reasons are not in place of foundation, 
edifice is found of little signification. 

First, as to God and his hypostases. Here illustra- 
tion that a fool may read as he runs. Here sight at a 
glance of the Universal. Here analysis of greatest 
seen lying with least. Matter is least. 

Discovery and understanding of God are after the 
manner of discovery and understanding of Matter; 
discoveries, the two, equally self-verifying and irre- 
futable. Rosicrucianism starts, as do men at large, 
with the infantile idea that God is known just as 
directly and as unmistakably as is Matter. Here is 
beginning of his way. A very little later it is found 
out that phenomena are mistaken for what were 
deemed things themselves; more than this, that, as 
matter is concerned, this is an essence which no 
human may possibly take hold of or see ; that in itself 
it is "without form, and void." This knowledge re- 
quired not the perception of an illuminatus ; it was 
come to by alchemy in its laboratory. Taking up, for 
example, a human body, chemistry found this to be 
easily resolvable into water, and this water, in turn, 
even more easily resolvable into gases. Thus, it was 
speedily recognized that true body, or matter, is a some- 



UNDERSTANDING OF HYPOSTASES. 



33 



thing the most unlike possible tt) that which is mis- 
taken for it. Is it necessary to add anything? Matter 
shows itself to a sense as it is of concern to the sense. 
It is not at all to the tongue what it is to the nostril, 
nor is it to the ear what it is to the sight. Matter is, 
yet is not at all, its phenomena. It is, as chemistry 
exhibits and demonstrates, an invisible noumenon. It 
is visible phenomena, however, in the shape of men's 
bodies, of land and houses, of sky and water. Matter 
being invisible in and of itself, confusion at once dis- 
appears as to difference between bodies terrestrial and 
bodies celestial. Celestial is change of phenomenon as 
to environment; it is certainly to be apprehended as not 
at all less real because of lack as to form that is see- 
able, or tasteable, or smellable, or touchable. Matter 
is the correlative ; it is the unseen ether ; it is earth's 
carpet of grass ; it is heaven's dome of sky ; it is the 
picture hanging against the wall ; it is the wood blazing 
upon the hearth ; it is of the pig grunting in the pen ; 

it is of the orator preaching in the pulpit. What is 

it? Known through its manifestations. A celestial 
body approaches evidently nearer the real than does 
the terrestrial body. 

The God also is evident alone as phenomena. God 
is Superior and Director. Matter is seen to have 
its changes under undeviating and absolute direc- 
tion. Seasons are found ordered in requirement 
to harmony. Water runs downward in form of 
streams until needed to run upward in form of moist- 
ure. Forests moulder not, but change into coal- 
mines, that the needs of a thousand years be supplied. 
The microscopic insect finds limbs as well ordered to 



34 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 



purpose as does the ponderous elephant. The spheres 
roll in an eternal harmony, coming never into collision. 
Immensity, immeasurable, incomprehensible, unthink- 
able, is phenomenon of Designer. 

Has a Rosicrucian eyes that will pierce the an- 
tipodes ? Has he ears that can hear the rush of world 
by world as movement and rush are eternal in space? 
He has, as he discovers, what he needs. Matter is a 
certainty to him. God is a certainty to him. Having 
come to understanding that the day concerns the day; 
that matter, as it is to the purposes of the day in which 
he finds himself, will hold together when nailed or 
sewed ; that it will harden or soften ; that it is to be 
made light or heavy, white or black, cumbersome or 
endurable; having discovered that it is with phenomena 
alone that he possesses means of contact, he at once 
gives over associations which he understands belong 
not to to-day. To come to these associations he bides 
the time and tides of nature, comprehending fully that 
time and tide are forever, and that invisible is in turn 
visible. 

Settled into tranquillity by entirely satisfactory rec- 
ognition of noumenon through phenomena, an end is 
reached where instrument becomes negative and pre- 
pared for use. Analysis has shown the Rosicrucian 
what he is ; more than this, what he can become as to 
his Ego. If, out of his understanding, he put office 
before self, he learns directly of the God as the God 
comes to live in and to make use of him. 

The law of relation of God with men is found to be 
little different to the law of relation of matter with men. 
Ego may environ itself with fatness ; it may move 



UNDERSTANDING OF HYPOSTASES, 35 

about in leanness ; its environment may be wholly 
matter ; it may be a temple and a carrier about of 
Holy Ghost. Ego is an Independent : it may select 
or follow where and how it will ; it may spend and 
be spent with the brutes ; it may ally itself with and 
find itself ^ companion of the God. 

Synopsis. — Man is not a simple single being, but 
consists of a possible conjunction of parts, which parts 
are the sole common constituents of the world. These 
things, or parts, are : i. A selfhood, which is the 
meaning of his individuality. 2. Matter, which is one 
with his body. 3. God, which is one with his soul. 
Cultivation of Ego, or selfhood, grows the personal. 
Cultivation of matter grows body. Cultivation of God 
grows soul. Man is of earth earthy or of heaven 
heavenly, according to which of the associate hypos- 
tases he cultivates. 



36 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



CONCERNING MATTER OR BODY. 

What shows itself not one thing or another to the 
process of Exclusion, that is nothing. 

The analysis passed over is analysis after a general 
manner. To refine on such analysis observation is to 
advance to detail. Man not knowing himself knows 
to advantage nothing outside of himself. Matter, the 
subject of the present chapter, offers study of that part 
of the hypostases of a man understood as body. Ulti- 
mate of body being reached, induction discovers Ego. 
Ultimate of Ego reached, difference between man and 
brute is found to be with soul. Definition of difference 
between comprehension and apprehension is practically 
introductory of hypostases. 

Knowledge is of two kinds : it is of Comprehension 
and of Apprehension. By the first is meant an ability 
to compare derived out of experiences. By the second 
is implied cognizance existing in the Something which 
needs no experiences for its fruition, — i.e., the soulis- 
tic light ; or, to express this in the language of that 
great and peculiar Rosicrucian, Jacob Behmen, the 
" Divine illumination." To demonstrate the possible 
existence of this duality in knowledge, illustration needs 
but to be made by reference to the double nervous 
system found related with man : the one, the cerebro- 
spinal, knows nothing but what it collects to itself 
from the outside; the other, the ganglionic, has its 



COMPREHENSION AND APPREHENSION 37 

meaning entirely within itself: it knows, and feels, and 
acts as well on the first as on the last day of its organ- 
ization. 

Comprehension is in the use of what are known as 
the Senses ; it means learning attained by sight, touch, 
taste, hearing, and smell. There is no immediate 
knowledge of the world and of its associations ob- 
tainable otherwise than through the senses. It is 
to be added that senses, like knives, may be sharp or 
dull. 

Apprehension is a means of knowledge possessed of 
limitless significance. It is of no connection with 
animal wants, — certainly of no connection with the 
five senses which pertain to requirements of organic 
life. If it be considered as a sense, that sense is a 
peculiarly special one, and has nothing to do with the 
functions and well-being of muscles, bones, and viscera. 
It must relate, if it relate with anything, as a medium 
of connection and association with the theistic. 

Accepting, for a present purpose, that a man is indi- 
vidual, — that is, that he is a Self hood, related, with 
a great universe which revolves about him, and with 
which, compulsorily, he must live in accord, — he is to 
understand how inquiries are wisely made. 

By the senses are meant media of communicatiofi. 
Hardness in stone is understood by touching such a 
body; sounds harsh or sweet are measurable in the un- 
dulations passing across the drum of the ear; sweet- 
ness and bitterness are contrasted in taste; odors, 
offensive or grateful, are distinguished through smell. 
An individuality lacking as to the senses, or possessed 
only of such as want in acuteness, shows as idiot or 

4 



38 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

sciolist. So, after a not unlike manner, he who is 
possessed of worthy senses, yet refuses to learn by 
touching, seeing, tasting, hearing, and smelling, this 
one, too, shows as idiot or sciolist ; difference between 
idiot, sciolist, and the worldly-wise being simply and 
wholly as to the extent to which a man has touched, 
looked, tasted, listened, and smelled. 

Senses which pertain to a man as an animal have no 
relation with things external to the meaning of animal 
organism. Senses deal with things that are like them- 
selves: eyes look, they do not smell; nose smells, it 
does not look. The instruments of touch, taste, smell, 
sight, and hearing die and break up when that organ- 
ism of which they are a part dies and breaks up ; they 
are of earth, earthy. Look at and analyze as we may, 
there is found with the common senses of men nothing 
different from the tearing eye-tooth that secures to the 
carnivore its prey, or nothing dissimilar to the rough 
tongue that tears off the grass for the herbivore. An 
only distinction is as to refinement in ends: a lion, 
alike with a cow, and alike with a man, touches, tastes, 
looks, listens, and smells. 

As senses pertaining to organism are concerned, no 
dissection, no analysis, no deductive reasoning can 
show difference between field-mice and men. Hawks 
have, indeed, advantage over humans in sharpness of 
sight ; buzzards smell where the man perceives nothing ; 
a horse pricks up his ear where silence oppresses the 
traveller. Difference as to quality of sense between 
brute and brute is in degree ; between man and brute 
it is the same. 

But man eternally holds his head upward. He finds 



CONCERNING MATTER. 



39 



his way through the murkiest of clouds ; he scales the 
empyrean ; he hugs closely the breast of the God, — 
some men, not all men. 

Means to ends are ever a necessity. The soulistic 
feeling is universal. It differs in acuteness, but it is 
everywhere that man is. Men may be found who are 
idiots soulistically ; a great multitude are sciolists ; a 
few, on the other hand, are demi-gods. Idiocy and 
sciolism differ as sense, and as the use of sense, are con- 
cerned, and nothing on the earth or in the heaven is 
to be taken hold of save by means of a sense. If the 
soulistic sentiment be admitted to exist, it follows that 
man is possessed of other than the organic senses. 
This accords scientifically with what the Bible teaches : 
**The brute looketh downward, the man upward." 
There is no sense common alike to humans and to 
brutes which will carry to any intercourse outside the 
domain of matter. What the soulistic sense is a 
Religious knows by reason of possession. The physio- 
logical anatomist does not know what it is by means 
of his art, but he is able to come to a knowledge, 
through the process of induction, that there is a some- 
thing related with the human composition that is capa- 
ble of dealing with and affirming of existence beyond 
the Noumenon and characteristics of Matter. As a 
correlative to his conclusion, it follows that man is a 
being having relation with a dual existence; conse- 
quently, that there are two conditions which he is 
bound to consider and to provide for. 

This presence of Holy Ghost is nothing at all dif- 
ferent from what men call Soul ; and here it is, and 
here it is only, that distinction is to be found between 



40 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

men and brutes. Soul is the Divinity as it may or 
does reside with men. Soul is not Ego. Soulistic 
knowledge is knowledge existing in that which is 
Knowledge itself.* 

As the senses of organic life are understood to ex- 
press relation of man with the material, so this sense 
of religious life explains his connection with the imma- 
terial. To express it differently, and perhaps better, 
the one is human, the other Godly. 

Here a question pertinently propounds itself to sci- 
entific inquiry : Can a man be without a soul ? Cer- 
tainly men are to be found wanting in eyes, so that 
they stumble. If soul be identical with the divine 
principle, a multitude of people are assuredly encoun- 
tered, in whom, to say the best of it, little is to be 
seen that is holy.f 

What we are reading for is to find foundation. To 
secure it we are to begin with getting understanding 
of ourselves. Zoroaster is right : " He who knows 
himself knows all things in himself." 

First. How does a man know that he exists at all ? 
Truly there are wonderful arguments for and against. 
We shall come to these, not unlikely, as we are pre- 
pared for them. The French philosopher, Ren6 Des- 
cartes, stood one time where many are not unlikely 
still standing. He was seeking a foundation upon 
which to build. He was a good Romanist. In the 
sense that he feared to make a mistake by aggressive- 
ness, few were influenced more by that cardinal prin- 

* Refer to chapter on H)rpostases. 
f See " Man and his World." 



CONCERNING MATTER, 41 

ciple of scholasticism which directs that individual 
convictions are never to array themselves against the 
conclusions of Mother Church, 

The state of mind of Descartes was this. He was 
learned to the extent of knowing the philosophies of 
the ages and the traditions of the church. The fault, 
so far as his own satisfaction was concerned, lay in 
want of a ground of certitude. Things were not to 
him self-proving. A thing that was not self-proving 
he held not to be a thing at all ; that is, he held it not 
as a truth capable of universal acceptation. A system 
of religion, he maintained, was only solidly to be 
constructed when a foundation was secure, and which 
foundation would bear the unyielding demands of the 
universal. A first fact in such a base was to be found, 
if found at all, in recognition of a something that 
should contain in itself its own verification. The 
something found by Descartes — the something on which 
is built the Cartesian system — is the famous aphorism, 
familiar to almost every student. ^^Cogito, ergo sum^^^ 
**Man thinks, therefore he is." 

Not at all unfamiliar is the fact that faiths and sys- 
tems array honest seekers against one another. The 
earth holds 1,274,000,000 of inhabitants. Of these 
people 353,000,000 are Christians ; 8,000,000 are Jews ; 
120,000,000 are Mahometans; 1,000,000 are Par- 
sees; 483,000,000 are Buddhists; Fetichism numbers 
189,000,000 worshippers. Mighty in influence is 
Christ. Mighty too is Confucius. Possessed, however, 
of the greatest number of followers is the prince 
Gautama, founder of the Buddhistic religion. 

He who would comprehend for himself as to every- 
4* 



42 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

thing solely as a philosopher, is to start by laying aside, 
temporarily at least, any traditional faith of which he 
finds himself possessed. The intention is to depend 
primarily on the animal senses, finding, by the agency 
of these, understanding of what is learnable through 
them. Attained to this degree of knowledge, confusion 
in spiritual matters is capable of being dispelled, as are 
complexities in mathematical problems by the presence 
of demonstration. 

Accepting the Cogtfo, ergo sum as expressive of cer- 
titude, the Being that recognizes itself is to inquire and 
learn as to what kind of a being it is. This learned, 
the Being is to pass on and inquire as to things which 
concern and relate it with the Universal. 

Let us anticipate for a moment and consider of that 
which directly relates with our individual requirements 
and associations. An individuality, called a man, 
finds itself standing in the midst of a great universe. 
Under his feet is ground. Over his head is sky. The 
first is covered with growing things and with creeping 
and walking things. The other shows ether reaching 
into infinity. Suns countless, and planets in number 
not to be reckoned, are before him. Immensity con- 
fronts and confounds him. 

Thus assuredly stood individuality at the beginning ; 
thus stands man to-day. — Man, but not all men. All 
see the growing and the walking things, all look on 
the sky, all behold immensity, but all are not con- 
founded. A blind mole burrowing through the ground 
and a man's eye scanning the heavens are the same, as 
to material. Flesh and grass are one. A human soul 
despising a passion that forces it into contact with vice 



CONCERNING MATTER. 43 

is of a piece with Almighty God. So, too, Ego is some- 
thing different from both. 

Can we understand ? 

Man is an individuality. There is no doubt that 
this Ego may stick a finger of its environment in the 
fire or withhold it from the flame. If the man be un- 
learned, no master-guard stands over warning him 
when infection is in the air and death is snapping at 
his heels. He is his own doer and undoer, his own 
raiser up and his own puller down, and raising up 
and pulling down are exactly in proportion as knowl- 
edge is possessed by this Individuality and as use is 
made of it. Man is an animal. He is also a god, or 
can be. He can give one to the use of the other. 
He can deny one relation with the other. There are 
men who have no souls. Science finds no conscious 
immortality for matter. Brain is matter. All of body 
is matter. To get apprehension of immortality re- 
quires that man learn of things which are" outside of 
matter. 

To afford emphasis to what is to be advanced I point 
to this skeleton that hangs before us ;* it was brought 
only a few weeks back from Paris. It is an odd sug- 
gestion, but I want you to notice the peculiar hang of 
the lower extremities. I have never seen skeleton legs 
like these. Every time I look at these bones I incline 
more and more to the fancy that this man knew the 
Champs Elys^es well, and that life and means and pros- 
pects were danced away by him in the Jardin Mabille. 
I hold to this fancy, knowing that a Jardin Mabille sup- 

* From class lectures. 



44 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

plies the almshouse and that the almshouse furnishes 
skeletons. 

Turn your eyes to this second object. It is the em- 
balmed body of a woman from over whose heart have 
been removed the concealments of muscle and skin. 
There is here no soft silken raiment. No bouquet 
emits sweet odor. The gift of friendship, or of de- 
ception, glitters not out from the bosom. Where once 
was warmth there is now coldness. Where passion sat 
enthroned now is nothing but stillness. This was 
lifted from the chilly marble slab of a morgue and 
brought here. 

" One more unfortunate 
Gone to her home." 

Whence? Whither? 

Turn your eyes still again to these expressions of 
mortality ; this time as students prepared to deal with 
the metaphysics of the very practical science of anat- 
omy. I say the metaphysics of anatomy. The meta- 
physics of the subject is the higher anatomy ; it is con- 
sideration of the something of which anatomy is the 
image. 

Our consideration is of Matter; just here of this 
alone; of the matter which makes up the bodies of 
men and women. 

*' What is this skeleton? As to answer I have no 
doubt. A skeleton is the bony framework of a body. 
The whole made up of many pieces : over two hundred 
in number. Any piece analyzed is found to be a com- 
bination of animal substance and earthy salts. Does 
it seem strange that a teacher of anatomy, after thirty 



CONCERNING MATTER. 45 

years spent in the dissecting-room, should be found 
admitting that he has never seen a bone?" 

Here is a femur : the long and heavy thigh bone. 
Here are a Rosicrucian's acid bath and a slow-burning 
furnace \ the latter possessed of an oven from which air 
can be excluded. Let us get understanding of the 
admission. 

**What is the femur?" 

** The femur is a bone described as made up of a 
shaft, extremities, processes, ridges, and holes called 
foramina, and which has its being by reason of a union 
of gelatine, blood-vessels, lime, magnesia, and soda." 

**Then there would be no bone if gelatine, blood- 
vessels, lime, magnesia, and soda were absent?" 

*'It follows that, if these be the bone, absence of 
them would be absence of bone." 

" But what as to the form of the bone? would this 
too be absent?" 

**Form shows itself as one with constituents." 

**With all, or with part, of constituents?" 

** With all necessarily, as when part of a thing is 
away it is not in shape as when all were present." 

" Then we are to say that part of this femur being 
away form could not be as when the part was not 
away?" 

" We would say, as of chair or table, part being 
away, form is away ; that is, form as it represents the 
thing in its integrity." 

" But as to what constitutes a thing : whether this be 
con'stituents or form?" 

" Not form, surely, else figures of things would sub- 
serve purposes equally with things themselves." 



46 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

''A thing, then, is its constituents?' 

*'It is this or it is nothing." 

'* Let us see. Here is a bone just lifted from the 
acid bath. What shall we name this bone, and why ?'* 

*' It is to be named femur because it is a bone held 
up a little time back, and it is as to every particular of 
form what it was before." 

" Here, then, is a femur held up alike a little while 
back ; it possesses form in every particular as before ; 
it has just been lifted from the oven. Shall the name 
continue for it?" 

"Undoubtedly, seeing that it is a femur." 

** That is, seeing it to be femur in form, and accept- 
ing form, in the instance of such a thing as a bone, to 
be identical with presence of constituents?" 

"Undoubtedly." 

"Yet in the bones held up there has been removed 
by the acid every particle of lime, magnesia, and soda, 
and by the fire alike every particle of gelatine and 
blood-vessels. Constituents here are entirely lacking ; 
yet, according to the definition, bone remains?" 

"It would seem proven that form and constituents 
are not the same." 

" The form being found here remaining, while con- 
stituents are absent, form is to be accepted as femur?" 

" Out of the showing it would seem undeniable that 
form and femur are one. ' ' 

" Constituents having disappeared, it would seem as 
proved that simple figure rather than substance is 
reality in all cases?" 

"It seems proved that figure is the real and per- 
sistent." 



CONCERNING MATTER. 4^ 

"Yet here the femur taken from the oven is now 
simply pressed in the hand, and form disappears in- 
stantly in a shower of dirt that falls to the floor. The 
femur, lifted out of the acid bath, parts as instantly 
with the distinctive form as manipulation rolls it into 
a ball which a boy may throw at freedom without re- 
gard to neighboring glass." 

''It is demonstrated that neither substance nor form 
is essence." 

** It is demonstrated that what is known of Matter, 
and its relations, are of phenomena and not of noume- 
non ; that to know a bone would be to know an Entity, 
of which shafts, processes, and foramina are simply and 
wholly phenomenal expressions." 

**Then it is to be declared that a thing is not what 
it seems to be?" 

**It is to be declared that nobody in the universe 
knows what a bone is, save as phenomenal expression is 
concerned. The thing we call real is only the shadow, 
as it were, of an essence. Presence of shadow is proof, 
however, of the existence of essence." 

**This is explanatory of Anaxarchus's contempt for 
the threat of Nicocreon to bray him in a mortar?" 

"It is explanatory of an estimate in which matter is 
held by the philosopher." 

Rosicrucianism having gained a ledge or premise, 
holds and fixes it as a base about which to concrete or 
from which to depart. 

As femur, or the material body at large, is concerned, 
the Rosicrucian comes to understand it as Essence 
serving temporarily the uses of Ego. What Matter is 
as to its reality he knows that he has no means of 



48 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

knowing, and that knowing is of no concern with 
wants or purposes. On the subject of Matter he is at 
rest, by reason of understanding its relation with him- 
self. The understanding he has reached is as follows : 

I St. That a huncian body is of the same material as 
a curb-stone. 

2d. That the wonderful instrument called brain finds 
familiar representation in the toy called a kaleido- 
scope ; and that one is not a bit differently immortal 
from the other. 

3d. That there shows itself, out of a process of ex- 
clusion, conducted even only so far as analysis of 
Matter, a Something which is not matter. The analysis 
demonstrates the something to be of individual signi- 
fication; further, that body is to it what a flute or other 
instrument is to harmony. 

4th. That as it is the office of a flute to afford har- 
mony voice, so, in no dissimilar manner, is it the 
office of brain, muscles, and bones to serve the pur- 
poses of Individuality, or Ego. 

5th. That when Individuality is absent, body is in 
precisely the condition of an unoccupied house. An 
unoccupied house is without mission; it may as well be 
tumbled into its own cellar. We tumble bodies from 
which the Ego has gone out into a grave. 

6th. That as a flute is insignificant or great, accord- 
ing as it is acted on by harmony, so, in like manner, 
body is mean or mighty, as it is occupied. 

7th. That means relate with every end. That Ego 
requires the hands of matter with which to do, pre- 
cisely as knives are needed by surgeons for the accom- 
plishment of operations. 



CONCERNING MATTER, 49 

8th. That a flute or a knife is in the way of its highest 
meaning when it is dead to its wood or its steel, acting 
wholly, solely, fully in the harmony or skill that plays 
upon or uses it. 

9th. That the sole office and meaning of human 
body is to serve the purposes and intentions of Ego \ 
that because it is found in a state of constant change 
it is of relation to the Self as clothes, in turn, are of 
relation with it, — this, and nothing different; that body 
is to have consideration only as a phenomenon which 
suits wants; that an Ego's body, or environment, is 
never any two hours, or even any two minutes, abso- 
lutely the same ; that body has its proper consideration 
when measured simply as a tool is viewed. 

BoP€ is Matter. The whole body of a man is Mat- 
ter. The rolling oceans and the mighty continents 
are Matter. Nobody has the slightest idea what Matter 
is. This apparently so solid Entity is found resolva- 
ble, even through such crude means as the ordinary 
senses possessed by humans, into apparent Nothing- 
ness. The Senses which do the resolving show them- 
selves to themselves as nothing. This is science. It 
is irrefutable science. It is, too, the beginning and 
ending and intermediate of Agnosticism. The true 
Agnostic is one who has studied the Material, abscissio 
infiniti, as the manner is called, — that is, by the process 
of Exclusion, until he comes to repeat, but in other 
import than used by its author, the line of Thoreau, — 

" The wind that blows is all that anybody knows." 

The versatile and great scholar, Goethe, puts his con- 
Q d 5 



50 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

elusions in the mouth of Dr. Faustus, who is made to 
soliloquize as follows : 

" Philosophy, ah ! and law and medicine, 
And, woe is me ! theology also, 
Now I have studied through with burning zeal ; 
And here I am at last, poor fool, and am 
Wise as I was before : professor called, 
And doctor, too. And now for these ten years 
I've led my pupils by the nose. 
This way and that, and up and down, and see 
That we can know — just nothing." 

To be able with Goethe to know *' just nothing,'* 
and to be able with Zoroaster to know " all things in 
knowing one's self;" here is antipodes of distinction 
between Agnosticism and Rosicrucianism. 

But how to know ? For the Rosicrucian there is but 
one way : finding out by analyzing. Tradition and 
faith are nothing at all to a Rosicrucian, He has his 
Philosopher's Stone in his process of Exclusion. 
Where this responds, he accepts ; where it denies, he 
rejects. A philosopher's stone is one with educated 
senses. The use of the latter is the advantage of the 
former. 

A modern author says, '* Let us accustom ourselves 
to thought of evil that may come." Come to what? 
The allusion is to evil coming to body. Epictetus 
shrugs his shoulders in derision when his leg is twisted 
to its breaking by the brutal Epaphroditus, remarking, 
with a smile, "It is nothing, the body is external." 
The difference between the modern author and Epic- 
tetus is another expression of the difference between 
Agnosticism and Gnosticism. Agnosticism is the way 



CONCERNING MATTER, 51 

Up the mountain j Rosicrucianism is the garden of the 
gods at the top. 

The term Exclusion, on which so much stress is laid, 
means simply finding the garden by following the way. 

Agnosticism defines itself and the world, inclusive 
of man, in its declaration, — 

" Everything that is is Matter." 

As we have understood, a brick is matter, a potato 
is matter, water and air and fire are matter, brain is 
matter; if a man be not Something besides matter, it 
follows, necessarily, that his concerns and meaning 
differ nothing from other matter-composed things. It 
having been shown that matter, in itself, is not at all 
what the senses which constitute man's judgment — 
namely, touch, taste, smell, hearing, and seeing — are 
wont to regard as this entity, that while it is substance 
it is yet without form, that while sapid there is nothing 
to taste, that while odorous a flower is a myth, that 
while it is the reverberating sea grinding a beach 
there is no water, or that while it is chains of high 
mountains and stretches of measureless plains there is, 
in reality, nothing at all to see, who is to wonder at 
the confusion and at the absolute nihility which is 
Agnosticism? An Agnostic repeats, after the manner 
of his wisdom, words spoken by Pyrrho two thousand 
years back, *'// may be so y" ^^ Perhaps /" *' Such as it 
is is possible ;^^ ^^ I assert nothing y not even that I assert 
nothing. ' ' * 

Agnosticism is a department of scientific evolution 

* See " Thinkers and Thinking." 



52 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

which it is becoming in every intelligent and inquiring 
person to inform himself or herself about. The word 
itself is so comparatively new that it has hardly yet 
found place in the English dictionary. The idea, on 
the contrary, is so old — as will be shown presently — 
that it originates with Thales in his famous question, 
" Who and what is man ?" asked just six hundred years 
before the birth of Christ. 

Agnosticism is the same — if expressed after a differ- 
ent manner — as Darwinism. It is the same as spontane- 
ous or natural selection or evolution, under whatever 
name presented, or however called. It is scepticism 
which sees all the God it knows anything about in the 
brick, in the potato, in the water, the mountains and 
the plains. It is what has held, and continues to hold, 
in its discipleship some — many, indeed— of the learned 
savans of the earth.* 

Matter, says Agnosticism, is the sum of every- 
thing; it is everything that is either comprehensible 
or apprehensible: beside matter there is nothing out 
of which to make judgment. The measure by which 
an Agnostic measures is the use of the rule recog- 
nized in philosophy under the term common sense. 
Now by this term is not meant that indefinite some- 



* It is certainly not here the idea to make foolish outcry against the 
religiousness of Darwin and of a multitude like him ; the scepticism 
of such is not at all the scepticism of the uneducated ; it is not at all 
scepticism in the common idea of the term. To say " that it is scep- 
ticism which sees all the God it knows anything about in the brick, 
the potato," etc., means saying that in the estimation of such God is 
unknowable after any other manner than through what is seen in 
phenomena. 



CONCERNING MATTER. 53^ 

thing which is on the tongue of every person who 
disagrees with the actions of his neighbors, but it im- 
phes the five media of intercourse which relate men 
with the world as it is outside of them, and that these 
five media tell us everything we require to know and 
everything that it is possible to know. 

When a man starts to build a house his security for 
a satisfactory result lies with the foundation. Consider 
in turn the stupendous importance of a foundation 
upon which is to rest the significance of a man's life. 

To walk satisfactorily in a road, one is to know that 
it is the right road. Man is to have understanding of 
an ending through comprehension of a beginning. 

By that reader familiar with the confusion as to 
foundational premise existing in philosophical systems, 
as exampled in the asseveration of Agnosticism, that 
** premise is impossible," that "man can know nothing, 
and that there is no use in trying to find out anything,'* 
great interest must be felt in a declaration that premise 
is not only possible but irrefutable, not only irrefutable 
but, once attained, ever maintainable and holdable. 

As philosophy means knowledge, and as knowledge 
is the beautiful and desirable thing of the world, so the 
temptation is great to reach here and there, and to 
wander hither and thither, as one pursues the way of 
the mountain. But to wander is to incur danger of 
becoming lost, which accident has happened to a multi- 
tude of wanderers, and will surely happen to every one 
who carries not with him an unerring compass. 

Understanding of self begins with inquiry into what 
is known as Anthropology, meaning by this an inlook at 
man's efforts to find out who he is, what he is, where he 

5* 



54 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

is. The origin of inquiry, as employment of purely an- 
alytical sense is concerned, lies with one Thales, an in- 
habitant of Ionia, born six hundred and twenty years 
before Christ, and known, because of his learning, as 
one of the seven wise men of Greece. Thales was an 
extensive traveller, was skilled in astronomy, was a 
geometrician, was prominent as a politician in public 
affairs, has the credit of being the founder of philoso- 
phy, certainly was the originator of what is known as 
lonianism. By lonianism is meant very much the 
same, if, indeed, not identically the same, as is meant 
by modern Agnosticism, namely, — 

" Everything that is is Matter." 

''The world," said Thales, *' is water, man is water, 
God is water." 

Another philosopher of this school is known as An- 
aximenes. His conclusions related all existence with 
air, which he declared to be the original principle of 
which all things are formed, and into which all things 
resolve. Another of this sect is the famous inventor 
of the sun-dial, Anaximander. His theory apportioned 
the sum of the all to heat. Empedocles was another of 
this school. He was a Sicilian, born somewhere about 
450 B.C. That he was a man of simple nature is not to 
be doubted, seeing that he refused the offer of royalty 
with the purpose of giving to Sicily a republican form 
of government. The views of Empedocles are to be 
remembered by us with an object. He himself put 
them thus, — 

" Nature is a clay, a plastic ; it is but a mingling and 
then a separation of the mingled. To-day the clay 



CONCERNING MATTER, 55 

represents a man, to-morrow it is a stone, another day 
it is something else. Nothing is there but a perpetual 
flux of things j the world of phenomena is a flowing 
river, ever changing, yet ever the same." 
He goes on, — 

Who thinks aught can begin to be which formerly was not, 

Or that aught which is can perish and utterly decay ; 

Another truth I now unfold : no natural birth 

Is there of mortal things, nor death's destruction final ; 

Nothing is there but a mingling and then a separation of the mingled, 

Which are called a birth and death by ignorant mortals.''^ 

The famous Aristotle, credited by Sir William Ham- 
ilton with being the founder of the science of logic, 
pronounced by well-judging biographers as being not 
only illustrious among ancient philosophers, but per- 
haps the most remarkable man, as intellect is con- 
cerned, that ever lived; the ** peripatetic," as he was 
called, because of a restless temperament that never 
allowed of his standing still, — a man who for two 
thousand years governed the thoughts of the world 
not less than the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas 
rules the thinking of the present Roman Catholic in- 
tellectual evolution, — this man, mighty in learning, 
wrote his position thus: ''Matter is, and always has 
been ; yet has it end, but each end is the beginning 
of a new end." 

This Aristotelian conclusion leads necessarily to a 
digression without which the premises to succeed could 
not be logically followed. 



* See " Thinkers and Thinking," presented after other fashion in 
that book. 



56 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

Where and what, agnostically, was beginning will 
no doubt be a confusion to men so long as the earth 
exists. One of two premises is certainly true, — 
namely, that the earth had a beginning, or that it is 
without a beginning. In our own Bible it is described 
as to its make and its manner of making, and the age 
is inferred as about six thousand years. Traditional 
Chinese history refers, on the contrary, to things said 
to have happened even so far back as forty thousand 
years. Merlet, in the direction of geological events, 
makes calculations as to the age of certain human 
remains, putting the years at one hundred and forty- 
three thousand. Surely, at any event, there was an 
Azoic age, meaning an age without lifej for how could 
life have been possible when the rocks themselves, or 
that which was to become rocks, was liquid fire? 
Then surely do water-made stratified rocks prove a 
Palaeozoic age, and here first living things are met with 
by science in shape of mollusks and fishes. Next, the 
water fairly dried up, a Carboniferous age. Following 
this the ages of reptiles, brutes, and men. Let us 
strengthen this by repeating, but in difi'erent terms, 
the fact that human body is a phenomenal expression 
of Matter known to the Rosicrucian as protoplasm. 
Protoplasm is, in turn, analyzable into gases combined 
with carbon and sulphur. The source, chemically, 
of protoplasm is the green growth of the ground ; 
man's body thus seen to be simply grass in a changed 
form. Animal body understood as being protoplasm, 
and protoplasm understood as being, after a manner, 
identical with the green verdure of the earth, it is no 
difficult matter to comprehend that, as lower organiza- 



CONCERNING MATTER. 



57 



tions go before the higher, verdure must have been 
before man ; neither is it any more difficult to com- 
prehend that animal body resolves into whence it has 
origin, — this round going on forever. Here the Aris- 
totelian aphorism, *' Matter has end, but each end is 
the beginning of a new end ;"■ that is, an end of grass 
being milk, an end of milk being flesh, an end of flesh 
being a fertilizer, an end of a fertilizer being grass; 
thus round and round forever. 

Notice here, as desired to be emphatically impressed, 
that the philosophy of the present volume is shortly to 
map out locality and origin of responsible beginning, 
and that, if such locality and origin be not accepted, 
then subsequent studies are to be esteemed as of simple 
educational import, and not as a guide to life and to 
living, which the inauguration set out to make them. 

But let us take a glance at man's evolution as he 
is known, not to tradition, but to absolute observa- 
tion and inspection. For heed ! not until we have 
travelled a long way do we as philosophers come up 
with our Bible. Indeed, as Descartes puts it, "until 
ground be found to stand upon, a philosopher must 
deny both God's and his own existence." Certitude 
in philosophy must be absolute. No tradition, no 
system is to be taken for granted. Where ground is 
not immovable there is no foundation. Materialism — 
absolute materialism — is the science of beginning; 
there cannot be any other science of beginning. 

Darwin evolves man from the anthropoid ape, and 
an ape from a reptile, and a reptile from a conjunction 
of Silurian and vegetable life, and Silurian and vege- 
table from palaeozoic rocks broken down into soil ; and 



5 8 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

the palaeozoic rocks are a birth of the waters, and the 
mollusk came from a monad that preceded it, and 
the monad that preceded it came from — came from — . 
Professor Haeckel, the foremost champion in Germany 
of materialistic views, cuts the Gordian knot after this 
very summary fashion : i' The primitive monads were 
born in the sea by spontaneous generation, as saline 
crystals are born of their mother- waters." This being 
accepted, Archimedes might come back; for the ful- 
crum to enable him to lift the world, after which he 
inquired, has been found. 

Lefevre tries for a start after this manner: " Living 
organisms result from chemical combinations. The 
organic contains nothing that is not contained in the 
inorganic," — fluidity, crystallization, cell, vegetable 
or animal organism, sense, thought, are modes of 
motion." 

Many hours could be consumed in referring to men's 
inquiries into a foundational ground from which to 
start and upon which to find themselves able to build 
a structure that zephyrs, not to say hurricanes, will not 
bring down as tumbles the playhouse built of cards. 

Accepting the tracings on some bones of the pliocene 
period, detected by the Abbe Burgeois, as expressive 
of the oldest vestiges of men, we are carried to an age 
when the human differed nothing at all from apes 
able to strike with stones and sticks. He cracked 
bones to get at the marrow. His resting-place was a 
cave or the concealment of a leafy tree. He fought 
to satisfy hunger. He knew good and evil simply as 
he was warmed by the sun or conquered by the cold. 

How did he come from that to where he is ? He 



CONCERNING MATTER. 59 

came, and comes, simply as a torrent differs from a 
rivulet. He differs in constitution, or, if you prefer 
the word, in progressive development, from what has 
been overcome and advanced upon. 

Put it in this way : No man can compete in jumping 
with a kangaroo, for the reason that the latter has 
stronger thigh- and leg-muscles. Fishes swim and 
men go to the bottom : the former have fins. An 
eagle soars and the ox walks; the bird can fill its 
bones with air. 

Advance in man is through refinements or relation 
of his material attributes. Man has a brain instru- 
ment of greater range than any of the lower animals. 
Here is the intellectual power of a man, and here is 
the difference between man and man. Observe : there 
were Silurians that moved with agility, and yet a mussel 
is a Silurian. A sloth moves so indolently that his 
motion is hardly to be seen. The sapajou, a member 
of the same family, seldom stirs save in leaps. 

Here let us leave the Material of animal body and 
of the world at large as it is known to Agnosticism. 
To trace from the question of Thales to the refined 
and irrefutable physiological premises attained in the 
present day would indeed afford a beautiful field for 
study, but it would mean, not unlikely, for all except 
trained students, loss of the straight way by which we 
are to bring the less hardy to the mountain-top. 

Apropos. — As water, to be held, means the possession 
of a retaining vessel, in like manner recognition of 
Ego lies, with Rosicrucianism, in appreciation of 
Matter; that is, out of the use of the processes of 
Exclusion a Rosicrucian is led to know that there is 



6o ' SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

something beside matter. If the reader who has the 
book in hand is without this appreciation, he cannot 
take and hold, after the mediate manner, of what is to 
follow. 

Two terms growing more and more into general 
understanding are Exoteric and Esoteric. The stu- 
dents of ancient philosophic systems found themselves 
divided into classes under these two heads. This 
division is not at all an arbitrary one, but is a neces- 
sary condition of what Porphyry and Jamblichus speak 
of as *' degrees of initiation," which, however, is only 
another term for '* degree of knowledge." Both Pytha- 
goras and Plato, and as well the Alexandrian mystics, 
had doctrines which they taught publicly to all ; they 
had also other doctrines which they taught secretly to 
the initiates, — i,e,, to disciples informed enough to 
comprehend. Agnosticism treats of the Exoteric, or 
external. The Esoteric, or internal, is treated of by^ 
Gnosticism. The way of a Rosicrucian, who will take 
nothing, or believe nothing, on the ipe dixit^ or on 
faith, is to gnosticism through agnosticism; through 
exoteric to esoteric. 

Invisible Made Visible. — A piece of carbon, say 
charcoal, if combined with hydrogen gas, is made in- 
visible as a gaseous compound, known to science as 
Di-Carbide, or Ethylene, H^Cj. This invisible is to 
be brought back into sight by mixing in a tall jar two 
measures of the gas Chlorine with one measure of the 
gas Ethylene, procured as above, and then quickly ap- 
plying a light to the mouth of the vessel ; a flame is 
seen in which the Chlorine and the hydrogen unite. 



CONCERNING MATTER. 6 1 

forming Hydrochloric Acid. The charcoal, carbon, 
being set free, falls in the form of a black smoke. 
The following is the chemical equation ; 

H,C, + 4CI = 4HCI + C,. 

(Ethylene.) (Chlorine.) (Hydrochloric Acid.). (Carbon.) 

Still, in turn, a physiologist may take this carbon 
and, by a process familiar to everybody who eats and 
digests, put it into a human limb, in form of muscle, 
through the road of the stomach. 

He is not Rosicrucian who fails to understand through 
such a demonstration as here made the Oneness of 
material visible and invisible. Observe, a common 
eye sees and recognizes a body called carbon. A 
chemist takes this body and unites with it hydrogen 
gas. Now it is shown to another common eye, which 
sees nothing. Does not a chemist recognize the car- 
bon as well in its second as in its first state ? May he 
not invoke this invisible and will not the carbon re- 
materialize so as again to become seeable by the eye 
of a non-initiate ? 

He is not Rosicrucian who finds himself confused 
concerning things described at the same time as known 
and unknown, as visible and invisible, as real and un- 
real. A thing is always to the Sense with which it is 
in correspondence what to that Sense it seems to be ; it 
is never anything else j solid is solid to touch, object 
is object to the eye. 

Rosicrucianism, possessed of irrefutable conclusions 
as to the meaning of animal environment, under- 
stands -that original body is of precisely the same 
signification as a first suit of clothes. It understands 

6 



II 



62 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

that attention given a first suit of clothes serves to keep 
no dust off a present one. It speculates, and enter- 
tains itself, concerning the primal materialization, but 
it relates its work and its uses with what is found at 
hand \ comprehending fully that the meaning of use 
and user lies wholly with the hour; that these have 
not, neither have had, nor can have, other relation. 
Come to such comprehension, as well has there been 
come to entire indifference as to whether or not origi- 
nal investiture lay in shape of monad, sloth, sapajou, 
or Adam. How can Rosicrucianism be else than in- 
different, knowing, as it does, that Matter is with man 
and not with man almost at the same moment ? — that, 
at any rate, form and manner of environment are 
simply tools to be used for ends; ends which vary 
with circumstances and conditions of surroundings; 
muscle being needed to fight off beasts, soul being the 
requirement to accomplish association with the God ? 



CONCERNING /. 63; 



CONCERNING I, OR EGO. 

" If only you can catch me, Crito, bury me as you please." 

Socrates, in the Phcedo. 

For purposes of plain demonstration attention is 
again directed to a skeleton. Will a skeleton move of 
itself? It is not seen to do so. The bones consti- 
tuting a skeleton are found having their various move- 
ments by reason of muscles related with and acting on 
them. Muscles, then, are to be accepted as the movers 
about of human bodies ? Only indirectly. When nerves 
which are met with running into muscles are cut, move- 
ment stops instantly, — as in paralysis. It is then the 
nerves that are the movers about of human bodies? 
Still only indirectly. If nerves be separated from the 
brain they are helpless, as production of motion is 
concerned, as strands of cobweb would be found. It 
is then necessarily the brain that is producer of motion ? 
Still again only indirectly. Brains, human and of 
brutes, are to be found in number filling the great jars 
and occupying places upon the shelves of dissecting- 
rooms, but no one of them has been known to break 
from its confinement or change locality. 

Analysis of a brain shows a construction of wonder- 
ful likeness to a telegraph system. Dissections of hun- 



64 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

dreds of brains, and of their allied relations of nerve- 
cords and ganglia, made by the writer in a long expe- 
rience as an anatomist, resolve the complexity into a 
simplicity as follows, namely, what a battery and cords 
are to an electrician, that exactly the nervous system is 
to the user of it ; again, the nervous apparatus is to 
the user of it precisely what a piano is to a composer 
and player. The understanding to be conveyed is that 
the nervous system is simply, wholly, absolutely an in- 
strument. Except that it is a more complicated in- 
strument as to construction, it is nothing at all dif- 
ferent from a shoe which serves its purpose of covering 
a foot, from a type-writer which makes letters in re- 
sponse to touches, from a wire and a battery which 
obey commands and convey messages, or from a violin 
which screams tones of anguish or laughs peals of 
merriment, which tones and peals are with him who 
draws the bow and not acts of the instrument j seeing 
that when instrument is separated from a player it is 
nothing but wood and strings. 

Truly, the brain is so identified with things known to 
Ego that it may be likened not inaptly to many things. 
It is a mirror j it is a sounding-board ; it is a hewer and 
carrier ; it is a builder and destroyer ; it is a navigator 
of the sea and as well a traveller through woods ; it is 
the physician working at problems of diagnosis ; it is 
the mathematician conning over questions in figures ; 
it is all that exhibits individual direction and intelli- 
gence. Yet exactly after a like manner the battery and 
cords of a telegraph are to be considered. A telegraph 
apparatus is a messenger : it carries and brings ; it is a 
lamp to dark places j it is a surgeon cutting with saws ; 



CONCERNING I. ^^ 

it is a navigator steering his vessel ; it is a musician 
playing on a great organ ; it is any and everything 
which is expressive of ofifice performed by it. 

A telegraphic apparatus is means of expression, noth- 
ing else. A cerebral apparatus is means of expression, 
nothing else. 

Brain is mind-instrument. Mind is instrumentation. 

A brain separated from its user is little more than its 
bulk of water. If the bulk be squeezed to dryness be- 
tween the hands, or by means of a press, so completely 
does the mass disappear that a thimble will hold the 
residuum. Subject water thus obtained to the action 
of heat, and in a few moments this will disappear, as, 
in turn, will the solid residuum if subjected to a like 
influence. 

Man says, " I see," '' I feel," '' I taste," " I smell," 
*'I hear." The man expresses himself correctly. 
Certainly it is not a simple lens called the eye that 
sees. A man never thinks that it is his spectacles 
that look. What sees is the Self, the I. Optical 
apparatus, whether the ordinary organ of sight, a set 
of prepared glasses, or what else in the line of vision, 
are media of communication ; nothing different, noth- 
ing else. The means of smell, but not smell itself, lie 
with a collection of delicate strings. Hearing is by 
means of a semi-pulpy cord. Touch is accomplished 
through the instrumentality of white, hard strings sev- 
eral feet, many of them, in length. When, on the 
contrary, man says, '*I am heated, I am cold, I am 
hungry, I am famished," he speaks incorrectly, as here 
are indicated conditions of the environment and not 
any state or need of the Ego. 
e 6* 



C6 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

What is the I, and where is it ? 

Nothing in the circle of the Universal that can be 
thought about or conceived of has being apart from 
one of three existences, namely, Matter, Ego, and the 
(treating Power. Let emphatic repetition of this be 
made. If Anything, or Existence, be of concern to 
man, or, in turn, if man be concerned or related by 
reason of his being a living active sentient Reality 
v/ith any thing or things, this thing or these things are 
necessarily known by him in a sense which corresponds 
with the requirements of the relation, otherwise no 
such relation could possibly exist as that of use and 
user. The three self-proving existences are 

Matter, Ego, God. 

Here is occasion for a long pause. Here, at any 
rate, is the basis of judgment concerning all the uses 
and relations of the life universal; otherwise here is 
the philosophical weakness of Rosicrucian inductions. 

Matter as represented by body is proved not to be 
identical with the I, for the reason, as clearly under- 
standable, that no animal body continues constant to 
its individuality any two hours or even any two min- 
utes ; an I that has become familiar to any neighbor- 
hood for a period, say, of forty-nine years, has lost and 
acquired seven full and complete materializations, — that 
is, seven bodies have come to and have left it. 

I is identical with Consciousness ; that is, with That 
which knows itself; it is identical with nothing else. 
Let a reader who is not entirely clear as to this po- 
sition consider the proposition. *'I am an I," was 
the impulsive and enthused exclamation of Jean Paul 
Richter, as, on an occasion, standing in the door-way 



CONCERNING I. 67 

of the paternal house, the internal vision rushed upon 
him, as he describes it, '* like a flash remaining ever 
after luminously persistent." "For the first time,'* 
he says, "I had seen itself, and forever.'* 

I, on the other hand, is not the Creative power, else 
would consciousness of fulness or completeness reside 
with it. Ego recognizes itself as no designer of en- 
vironments incomprehensible to itself. Ego perceives 
that it can say nothing of things as to what their reality 
may be, for the reason that it knows nothing of things 
apart from the manner in which things present them- 
selves to Consciousness. All that it can say, or pos- 
sibly know, is that a Thing is to Its use what to the 
sense that uses It it seems to be. 

I is the ground of Certitude. Here is foundation. 
I is identical with Self. The concerns of a man are 
with what constitutes the circle of his relations ; and 
with nothing else. The proper study of man is man. 
In man is all that belongs to man and with which man 
belongs. 

User is to be appreciated as separable from instru- 
ment; here is the first and chief matter; after this 
may come a study of mind. 

The demonstration, or analyses, of a brain is never so 
simply, and at the same time so comprehensively, made 
as when an anatomist commences by drawing on a 
blackboard a central lobe expressive of the part known 
as the quadrate body. This body is a square mass sit- 
uated in the centre of the nervous system, and when 
looked at poetically impresses as serving as dais or sup- 
port to a mysterious arcanum resting upon it. This 
mysterious arcanum is the Pineal gland ; the seat, as 



6S SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

maintained by the ancients, of the Soul. Surround- 
ing this Pineal gland on every side is what is known as 
the Cortical, or gray, material of the brain. This gray 
material is purely instrument subservient to the re- 
quirements and demands of a user. It is, in every 
sense and manner, except as its superior capabilities 
and ramifications deny comparison, what the evolving 
or force-making means of a telegrapher are. This 
gray material, forming what are known as the convo- 
lutions of the brain, is to be drawn somewhat distantly, 
about four inches, around the gland. A succeeding 
diagram is to exhibit a countless number of cords 
which lead from this battery, directly or indirectly, to 
all the avenues of the body at large, and, by means of 
special cords, known as special nerves, to the organs 
of sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste; leading to 
and relating with things known as external ; to and 
with everything, to and with every place, with which 
an I has to do. 

A still succeeding drawing is to show in connection 
with the lines of these different cords a series of what 
are known as ganglia. These ganglia are lesser brains, 
or batteries, the office of which is to localize and to 
intensify office or meaning. 

The ganglia are to find another analogy in the in- 
ferior offices of a telegraphic system. An inferior 
office receives from a main office and transmits what is 
received ; an inferior may receive and respond without 
other than a general relation with its main office. Ego 
is served not alone by one, but by a hundred brains ; 
so too is a telegraphic system served not alone by one, 
but by hundreds of batteries. 



CONCERNING I. 69 

A final drawing is to show the wonderful fact that 
the Pineal gland is related by means of two reins which 
pass out from its inside with every measurable space or 
point of the nervous system that has been described. 
An occupant, seated in the arcanum of the Pineal 
gland, could remain in eternal fixity, yet see, taste, 
smell, feel, and touch the universal. 

In place of saying with the ancients that the Pineal 
gland is the seat of the soul, let us say that here is the 
seat of the Ego j or shall we say that Ego is one with 
Aura, and that its residence is with all atoms, as these 
exist for the time as environment ? It is certainly im- 
material as to which may be said, as assuredly nothing 
is known about the manner of relation. There is re- 
lation, however, relation as undeniable, as certain, as 
self-demonstrating, as relation existing between any 
instrument and its user. 

The I, Ego, Self, differentiates and distinguishes it- 
self. I is itself. It is nothing else than itself. 

Can men see the Ego? No mother has ever, with 
the common eye, seen her child, nor has wife after 
a like manner seen her husband, nor has sister 
seen a brother.* Ordinary acquaintance with an 
Ego is alone through what it exhibits itself to be in 
the acts of its environment ; these acts showing 
whether it is cultured or uncultured, of high or low 
degree, good or bad. Here, however, we are not to 
overlook character and temperament of environment. 
A great composer cannot express great conceptions 

* The language here is of purely physical import, and considers the 
every-day relation of things ; it has a wholly objective signification. 



70 



SFIRITUS SANCTUS. 



through a corn-stalk fiddle. A massive aichitect can- 
not construct out of fragments of stone and sticks. A 
musician can write no notes if means for writing be 
lacking. A poet mixes his metaphors if sense be want- 
ing for grammar. Ego may see alone through eyes, 
hear alone through ears, smell alone through nose, 
taste alone through tongue, touch alone through skin. 
There is, however, a something else just here, a very 
great something else; men see visions when the eyes 
are shut, a Beethoven hears while deaf, sensitives be- 
hold when in a trance. Here is the meaning of Senses 
back of Senses. Simple illustration lies with nightly 
dreams. Ego in turn, as suggested, is to be known 
alone through its manifestations. Charity judges 
never of Ego in disassociation from environment. An 
Ego is not to be esteemed ugly by reason of having 
between it and the looker a noseless or a pock-marked 
face. Ego is not to be called mannerless where by 
reason of absence of seeing eyes it gives not place on 
a public highway. When a man is insane, where is the 
defect, with Ego or instrument ? Can a player play on 
a broken flute ? 

How stupendous is greatness lying with comprehen- 
sible? During the period of the Middle Ages, when 
such disputants as William of Champeaux and Abelard 
discussed scholastic questions in the Sorbonne, one 
which arrayed scholar against scholar was this, "How 
many angels can stand on the point of a needle?" 
This question, ridiculous to any one untrained in anal- 
ysis, is seen by the cultured to express difference be- 
tween ordinary materialized Ego and Ego considered 
as the pure I; the first being weighable by scales, the 



CONCERNING L yi 

Other unseeable, intangible. The question is not a 
whit more out of the order of things as they exist than 
if the discussion had considered the possible standing- 
room to be found upon the roof of a house for men in 
ordinary environment. 

Environment, and character of environment, are 
accident, otherwise they are something that nobody 
knows anything about. Here beauty and here truth to 
be found with Pythagoras. 

" Death has no power the immortal part to slay ; 
That, when its present body turns to clay, 
Seeks a fresh home, and with unminished might 
Inspires another frame with life and light." * 

Compensation certainly exists. The God is no re- 
specter of persons. 

When, as it will be remembered, Socrates was about 
to drink the fatal hemlock, Crito, his friend, asked him 
how he would like to be buried. The reply is akia 
with the verse of Pythagoras: ** If only you can catch 
me, Crito, bury me as you please." 

A funeral made up of pomp and parade is quite as 
senseless a performance as though the burial casket 
held a suit of old clothes ; in truth it holds nothing 

different; "body is but a mingling and then a 

separating of the mingled, which are called a life and 
a death by ignorant mortals." Mingling and sepa- 
rating, otherwise death and resurrection, are continuous 
acts. 

The Ego put forth by Descartes as the foundational 

* See " Man and his WorldL" 



y2 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

truth or premise, as undeniable and indisputable Cer- 
titude, is foundation, and there is not, nor can there 
be, any other. This foundation rests with the absolute 
in analysis ; it is Ultimate reached through a process 
of Exclusion, where neither datum nor data can be 
lacking. More than this, it is self-asserting Apriori, 
and thus is outside of the pale of any necessity for proof. 
Here is the origin of the verse of Euripides, although 
the Greek never heard of the philosopher : 

** Who now can tell whether to live may not 
^ Be properly to die ? And whether that 
Which men do call to die, may not in truth 
Be but the entrance into real Ufe?" 

Not Caesar, but Caesar's body it is, that in turn 
passes from the environment of an emperor to ignoble 
service. I illustrate this to myself, if illustration be 
necessary, by throwing amongst coals which burn by 
the side of the desk at which I write pieces of scarfskin 
picked out of my palms, together with cuttings from 
nails and strands plucked from scalp and beard. These 
parts of my body fizzle and scorch and blaze and dis- 
appear ; I remain. I shall have no funeral over the 
ashes of the grate. On the morrow, when these ashes 
shall have been carried away, the I will be without 
concern as to whether the depositing place is a bright, 
sunny hill-side or a slum reeking with filth and vileness. 

What as to things which go without one knowing of 
the going ? What as to things which come without one 
knowing of the coming? Difference is certainly no 
difference at all ! 

In an Upanishad, a sacred book of the East, well 



CONCERNING I, 



73 



studied by Rosicrucians, it is recorded that Indra Ma- 
ghavat lived one hundred and five years as a pupil with 
Pragapati. The conclusion reached after all these 
years of study is little different from the premises of 
Cartesianism, and nothing at all different from the con- 
victions of Platonism. The words of the master are 
as follows : " Maghavat, this body is mortal and always 
held by death. It is the abode of that Self which is 
immortal and without body. When in the body (by 
thinking this body is I and I am this body) the Self is 
held by pleasure and pain. So long as he is in the 
body, he cannot get free from pleasure and pain. But 
when he is free of the body (when he knows himself 
different from the body), then neither pleasure nor pain 
touches him." 

But how does Ego get into body ? or how does 

body get around Ego ? 

After so simple a fashion as lies with the demonstra- 
tions of physiology I may say how environment once 
existing is maintained even though, as with Maghavat, 
thirteen bodies have been used and cast during his cen- 
tury of pupilage. From circumference of Pineal gland 
to circumference of body at large, parts are, in com- 
position, as series of molecules. As any one of these 
molecules leaves its place by diminution another occu- 
pies it through augmentation, hence Form continues 
filled ; waste and repair are the words of physiology, 
and here is the meaning of the emptying and filling of 
market-baskets. 

But as to origin of Ego ? 

Everything that is known, or that can he known, or 
that needs to be known of Ego shows itself in the mirror 
D 7 



74 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

that is a man's own Self. Our proposition is, as cer- 
tainly must be clearly understood, that Ego knows 
itself, as it finds itself, fully, undeniably, perfectly. 
Nothing not recognized in the mirror of Self is of the 
slightest possible concern or account. If Matter be 
not seen by Ego as Essence, matter as Essence is of no 
relation with it. If God be not seen by Ego, save as 
Creative power, recognition of God as Creative power 
is all that concerns it. 

There are two quaint verses carved on the gravestone 
of a certain Robert Crytoft, in the churchyard of 
Homersfield, which are expressive; they are entitled 
"Myself," and read as follows: 

" As I walk'd by myself, I talk'd to myself, 
And thus myself said to me, 
Look to thyself, and take care of thyself, 
For nobody cares for thee. 

" So I turned to myself, and I answered myself, 
In the self-same reverie, 
Look to myself, or look not to myself. 
The self-same thing will be." 

How shall a writer, such as he who here holds the 
pen, move from the present situation ? The query in- 
volves knowledge of the reader. This knowledge being 
impossible of attainment, there is nothing left but to 
turn in memory to old students and friends who for 
the moment are to be particularly addressed. We are 
acquainted with the speculative lore of the ages, dating 
from the origin of the question of lonianism, *^Who 
and what is Thales?" From Greece we crossed to 
India, learning of Esoteric foundation. Back to the 
region of the Archipelago Plato enlarged our experi- 



CONCERNING I. ^5 

ences, passing us, in turn, to the beautiful mysticism 
of the Alexandrians. From Plotinus, through whom 
it was, perhaps, we learned the naturalness of the super- 
natural and the manner of contemplating the Infinite 
in the process of Ecstasy ; through whom certainly it 
was that first we met and considered the Spinozan 
Pantheism of centuries, and from whom later we 
passed to scholasticism, this temporarily holding our 
attention as long before Carneades had held not only 
Rome, but Galba and Cato, its censors. Giordano 
Bruno had invited us by his honesty, and had repelled 
us by his coarseness. Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, 
Fichte, Hegel, Comte, the anatomists, the physiolo- 
gists, the metaphysicians, and the psychologists, all in 
turn, forward and backward and backward and for- 
ward, we have lived with and come to understand.* 

What is to say to the reader who is not of our classes 
except as follows : 

The I knows itself in and of itself. What every 
human being recognizes and knows as its Selfhood, 
that is Selfhood. But the man not of the schools is 
without data to appreciate what wonderful knowledge 
is this knowing of the I by the I. It is knowledge 
having existence before the schools. It was foundation 
in the beginning, it is foundation now. The single, 
only foundation is 



I. 



From I is departure, 
To I is return. 



* See " Thinkers and Thinking. 



76 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

MIND. 

Something more needs to be said about the subject 
of Mind. Mind .is expression of will inhering to Ego 
precisely, and in no other sense, as music is expression 
of harmony residing with musician. Will-expression 
is through brain, harmony-expression is through violin 
or other musical instrument. Brain and musical in- 
strument are exactly of like signification. A musical 
instrument allows of the giving out of sounds. A 
brain allows of the giving out of thoughts. Harmony 
is not of instrument, but of musician. Thoughts are 
not of brain, but of Ego.* 

Here it seems necessary to accord what is meant with 
physiological observations. What has been written of 
simply under the term brain implies what is known by 
the anatomist as cerebro-spinal system. This system 
lies both within and without the skull, and is made up 
of parts, prominent among which are to be named the 
cerebrum, cerebellum, pons Varolii, medulla oblongata, 
and spinal cord; besides these, ganglionic bodies in 
large numbers, complicated and multitudinous com- 
missures, together with nerve-cords possessed of special 
and common signification. In a word, this nervous 
system is the most wonderful machine in the world. 
A machine is it, because, like all other constructions, 
it is found wholly made out of matter. Matter is it as 
exhibited in the facts of its composition and decom- 
position. 

* Automatic thinking, a condition that surely manifests itself, is 
habit ; it is analogous, after a manner, with automatic motion. 



CONCERNING I. yy 

Differentiations as to special office of special parts 
have been worked out to a fair extent. It is to be 
implied, with good reason, that ganglia named the 
thalami optici preside over ordinary sensation, that 
other ganglia, the corpora striata, attend to the con- 
cerns of motion, that excito-motor responses relate 
with the spinal cord, and so on, down to the refine- 
ments of the localizations of Gall and Spurzheim.* 

Development and office constitute the differences in 
nervous apparatus. It is a science which certainly 
shall reach nothing that attempts the study of the 
human nervous system apart from nervous systems at 
large. Extremes lie with man at one end and a monad 
at the other end. Between is every grade of power. 

Proof of difference between the Ego of a human and 
the Ego of a monad, and of intermediate Egos, lies 
with difference met with in instruments. This differ- 
ence in animal instrument is seen in diminution of the 
cerebrum and in the comparative increase of the sen- 
sory ganglia, as descent is followed from the higher to 
the lower mammalia. In the animal known as the 
lowest of the vertebrate class, the Lancelet, sensory 
ganglia have taken the place entirely of cerebrum; 
there is not so much as a rudiment of this last. 

By a Lancelet it is demonstrated that cerebrum is in 
no sense identical with Ego, while it is as well nega- 
tively exhibited, considering a Lancelet, that it is iden- 
tical, as office is concerned, with what is known as 
Mind 'j that is to say, in proportion with the character 

* Much new work is being done in this direction which is of pro- 
found interest to the physiologist. 

7* 



78 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

and meaning of an Ego so is found its instrument. 
Inferentially, it is no unjust deduction that absence of 
cerebrum implies absence of, or at least little relation 
and intercourse by Ego with outside things. 

Again, it is known to every physiologist, be he Rosi- 
crucian or simple direct observer, that the cerebrum may 
be lost from an organism of which it is a natural part, 
and yet the bodily life go on quite as before ; an only 
difference being that expressions of mind disap,pear; 
offices pertaining to intellection having to be per- 
formed for the mutilated animal by an outside intelli- 
gence. The writer had at one time in his possession, 
for a period of several weeks, a pigeon from which the 
entire cerebrum had been taken away. An only per- 
ceptible difference between this and its fellow-birds lay 
with what has just been referred to. The pigeon would 
swallow when food was pushed back into its throat, and 
it would spread its wings if thrown into the air, but the 
performance of both offices was seen and understood 
to be purely automatic. 

The ganglia constitute, it would seem, the true sen- 
sorium of common organism, and with these ganglia lies 
the power to carry on organic functions independently 
of outside direction. The power and intelligence of the 
ganglionic system are the power and intelligence of a 
law in which the system has its existence ; saying this, 
all is said that is known concerning it ; all is said that 
is of signification in relation with organism ; it is 
matter's law dealing with matter ; it is phenomenon.* 

* The sympathetic system is allowed to go with simple mention, 
that confusion may be avoided, as unprofessional readers are con- 
cerned. See " Man and his World." 



CONCERNING SOUL. 



79 



In understanding the law of matter do we not under- 
stand that body seen and body unseen are the same ? 

God is good ! The dream-state affords Ego the 
secret of its relation with the Universal. 



"VI. 

CONCERNING SOUL. 

By the term Soul is meant exactly what has been 
named as the third of the principles of the Trinity ; 
namely, Holy Ghost. Let him or her who would be 
clear as to conception and understanding of the phi- 
losophy of the volume in hand recognize this thor- 
oughly. Soul, spirit, mind, Ego, and kindred terms, 
are so promiscuously used as implying the same thing 
that definition has come to defy definers. Writers and 
speakers everywhere employ common names without 
meaning at all common things. The same word is 
made to stand for things not at all the same. Reader 
and writer are here to understand each other as to 
definitions. 

Let the two circles considered, and the third, here 
to be considered, have hours, days, weeks, years given 
to getting full comprehension of them, if such time 
is necessary to such comprehension. Years have been 
given to the study of them by the writer. No man 
or woman ever has understood or ever can understand 



8o SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

himself or herself in relation with the Universal, un- 
less such comprehension be possessed ; not simply as 
to words, but as to an inwardness living with them. 
On the contrary, he or she who has this knowledge 
holds the key of the garden of the gods. The use of 
the key implies entrance. Not to use the key is to 
remain on the outside. The whole thing is not more 
complicated nor less simple than is the use or rejec- 
tion of a key belonging to any common house. 

Let the hypostases of man be repeated. 

The component parts of a man, considering him 
simply as an animal, are Matter and Ego. 

The component parts of a man, viewing him in the 
meaning which makes a perfect man to differ from an 
animal, are Matter, Ego, Soul. 

Difference as to these component parts which relate 
with the meaning of a man will well bear to be re- 
peated, as advanced originally in the chapter on Hy- 
postases and demonstrated, as the first two are con- 
cerned, in immediately preceding chapters. 

Matter. Matter is understood as one with what 
the common eye sees of the solid earth ; it is one with 
houses of stone and mortar and with houses of flesh 
and clothes. 

Ego. Ego, meaning by this, as has been defined, 
the I, the Selfhood, the Individuality, the That which 
in self-consciousness knows itself, the User of the 
brain-instrument; this is one with what it is; it is 
one with nothing else ; it is persistence where Matter 
is change ; it is noumenon where Matter is phenomena; 
it is, while unseeable by the crude senses of the en- 
vironment of fellow-men, tangibility itself, as repre- 



CONCERNING SOUL. 8l 

sentation of fixedness and immortality is implied by 
tangibility. Ego is not Matter, it is not Soul, it is not 
in any way nor after any manner else than what it is. 
Knowledge of I by I considers no past, embraces no 
future j the I of the moment is the I of the universal. 
That which knows itself is itself. The duty, relation, 
environment, circumstances, past, present, future, of I 
are with what is found with I.* 

Soul. Soul is difference between possibility of man 
and brute : other difference is of degree. Every man 
is born a common animal, — excepting that the animal 
man is endowed with a meaning not possessed by ani- 
mals inferior to him. So far as simple natural law is 
concerned this is nothing at all different from the fact 
of there being animals the law of whose organization 
crowns their foreheads with antlers, while, on the other 
hand, there are animals who are incapable of growing 
horns. Man not growing, or coming, to what he was 
created with the capability to carry, remains necessa- 
rily below the plane of his meaning; he continues 
exactly as born ; his life, his meaning, his desires, his 

* Ego, or I, is not to be understood as identical with Force. The 
force or mobiUty of Matter, as matter forms human body, lies with 
what is quite analogous with that which is the force or motive- 
power known as galvanism. The force of the Universe lies with re- 
lation. A mine filled with sugar and chlorate of potash and a lake 
full of sulphuric acid while kept apart rest in eternal rtiUness ; 
brought together, the earth could be rent in twain by reason of an 
activity issuing out of the combination. Galvanism secures means to 
its ends by sinking elements into a solvent. The force of body found 
at command of Ego is secured by swallowing into the stomach par- 
ticles of food which, after a like manner with the elements, are acted 
on by solvents. See " Man and his World." 

/ 



82 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

enjoyments, his sufferings, his everything, express en- 
tire and absolute analogy with common brute life. 
Soul is identical with Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost is 
identical with God. All expressions of the Universal 
are resolvable into one of three Noumena or Principals. 
There are but three Things in the Universal, — God, 
Ego, Matter. 

God is identical with creative power. 

Soul is necessarily one with Holy Ghost, in other 
words, one with God, for the reason that as there are 
but three Entities, namely, Matter, Ego, God, and 
we understand that it is neither of the first two, it must 
be the last, seeing there is nothing else that it can be. 

Let us now, with a view to greater clearness, repeat 
after still other manner, as in the instances of Matter 
and Ego, what is desired to be profoundly impressed. 

If it be not objected to, it will be assumed as ac- 
cepted that what has been described as Matter is for 
the use of body, — for the use of all bodies, — and that 
in turn human bodies are for the use of human Individ- 
ualities. Human individuality we understand as the 
Ego of the philosophers. Using our own language, we 
comprehend it as that which appeals for the verity of 
its existence in the I felt and recognized by every per- 
son as being Self, no matter what the varying age or 
changes of the body. Negatively we understand the 
existence of individuality by the physiological knowl- 
edge we have gained of its materializing and demate- 
rializing ability as exhibited to us by that constant 
necessity which exists for the filling and refilling of 
market-baskets. We recognize, psychologically, the 
existence and meaning of Individuality by the nightly 



CONCERNING SOUL, 83 

experience had of the ability of Self to leave its body, 
to wander away from it as one does from his house, 
and to return to it as one does to a house.* In a 
word, our present position is that there is a material 
body which is the Individuality of the unlearned, but 
which material body is no more the man than it is 
potato, stone, or brick; second, that the real self is 
an Existence unseeable by eyes created only with the 
ability to behold opaque things, and that therefore it 
is and must remain a phantom except as it is known 
by itself. The faultiness of judgment which esteems 
Materiality as one with individuality is seen in that 
universal recognition of a corpse as a something from 
which another something is gone out. Is not a body 
from which Ego is gone out hurried away as are repul- 
sive things? Is there not a certain sense of relief 
when a corpse is gotten out of sight ? Is it not the 
case that what is called death shows the living that 
body is not what has been cherished ? 

If at this point, and in these things, all are agreed, 
question advances as to the meaning and use of Indi- 



* Here is the mystery of Astral projection as expounded by the 
Theosophist. Knowing, as a physiologist, the law of vitaUty as mani- 
fested by the almost intelligent automatism existing out of the influ- 
ence of the ganglionic nerve centres, I see no reason to discredit a 
dream as being anything else than an illustration with which mortals 
are favored as to separability entire and complete of body and Ego. 
In other words, I see no scientific reason why a Self cannot, after 
some manner, get hold of the secret of leaving its temporary home 
and getting back to it, as, on the other hand. Matter certainly has the 
secret of passing from the environment of one Ego to that of another 
Ego ; a demonstration furnished every day by the uses of dinner- 
tables. 



84 SFIRITUS SANCTUS. 

viduality. How imposing, how stupendous, as men 
are concerned, is such question ! 

Do I not put before us this query just as all would 
have it put when it is asked, What are the meaning 
and use of this Individuality? 

I use here a good and reliable expression by another, 
which, if we get hold of it, enables the passing to 
succeeding premises. The expression is this: "That 
to which intelligence is confined is that with which 
alone intelligence is concerned." 

Now to what is the intelligence of Individuality 
confined? First, it knows itself. Second, it recog- 
nizes itself as not being self-creating. Please heed the 
next premise closely. A thing that is not self-creating 
has its office and meaning necessarily in that which is 
its creator. Conclusion : Individuality is an agent for 
the reason that every made thing is made for an object, 
and everything acting with a view to the accomplish- 
ment of an object is an agent. Individualities, then, 
are agents. Agents for what ? Agents to what? 

Heed again closely. An agent has meaning in the 
intention which creates it. The fulfilment of an inten- 
tion by an agent is its ultimatum ; is the completeness 
of its circularity. A common hog grunting and swill- 
ing in a pen is what it knows itself to be ; it is noth- 
ing else than what it knows itself to be. A hog eats 
that it may digest ; it digests that it may eat. If a 
hog eats, sleeps, digests, and makes lard, and if the hog 
be without consciousness of anything outside of such 
a circle, then it follows that lard is the all of a hog ; 
it is the completion of a circle of intention or design. 
Certainly it would in no way be possible for a hog to 



CONCERNING SOUL. 85 

pass to offices of the existence of which the animal 
could after no manner be made conscious. 

After a like manner of showing, the circle of a 
man's intention is comprised by that which he knows 
of himself. Every Individuality knows of its intention 
and meaning through the senses which are its instru- 
ments of communication with things not itself; it 
knows thus, and after no other manner. What fol- 
lows? A hog has individuality. A hog has the five 
senses known as belonging to pure functional life ; to 
common animal life. If a man be without other sense 
than the five described, — namely, sight, touch, taste, 
smell, hearing, — then it follows that intention and 
circle are the same with man and hog. 

If a man differs in his meaning from a hog, it is to 
be shown that the former possesses a something not 
related with the latter. It is to be shown as well that 
this something is in relation with a need and an inten- 
tion of a creator, — a something given additionally to 
man over what is his as common to himself with ani- 
mals at large ; of which animals he is, of course, one. 

If a something is to be shown, the something is a 
Sense, — that is, like is required to know like. The sug- 
gested Something cannot be what we have come to 
recognize and understand as Individuality, because we 
already have this and its office as a common possession 
of the animals at large. Individuality is the zenith of 
its own circle ; its office is in the senses which it finds 
provided for its use. Every sense provided for its 
outlook relates with matter. Its eyes cannot pierce 
beyond the stars. Its fingers reach only to the centre 

of the earth. Consider man's individuality as com- 

8 



S6 SFIRITUS SANCTUS, 

mon to brutes, reptiles, and clams, and from such 
breadth of outlook ask yourselves whether a hog seen 
in a pen at Christmas time, and eaten in the winter, is 
not found back in a pen in the fall. But see ! What 
is eaten is simply material grown by an Ego for a use. 
The use is the meaning of the office of that particular 
Ego. Again and again and again, it is to be assumed, 
will it re materialize itself as spiders weave for them- 
selves new webs to take the place of others destroyed. 
Who shall say it has not been thus from a beginning, or 
that it will not continue thus to the end ? 

The text of the idea to which we pass is office. 
Sense and office are identical. Our studies, so far, 
have distinguished for us Matter and Individuality, 
nothing more. Stopping here it is impossible to show 
that a man differs from a hog save in degree of re- 
finement in organic development, — that is, in manner 
which differs nothing at all from physiological distinc- 
tions demarcating hog from clam. 

Another Sense is to be found. No, not to be found. 
Its self-assertiveness made it known to the first man as 
it is known in degree to every man. Dull and indis- 
tinct in some men, it is the light of life to others. 
What name shall we give it ? There remains but one. 

Soul. 

An interpolation is here to be made. While the 
term Sense is used in connection with Soul, it is so 
employed simply to retain idea of means to end. 
Saying that a man sees an object is to relate him with 
such object by means of eyes. Saying that he touches 
a body is to relate him with the body by means of 



CONCERNING SOUL. 87 

fingers. In a precisely similar manner the term Soul, 
when spoken of as a sense, is meant to imply means 
of communication. If, a paragraph later, the manner 
of expression change, and soul be applied as identical 
with God, accordance rests with that which assumes 
like to be identical with like. Reference to and study 
of neoplatonism will show the direction of thought 
to be as beautifully simple as it is clearly plain. 

Then Soul demarcates itself as something different 
from individuality ? Consider for yourselves. If it be 
not a something different, then men, hogs, and clams 
are of common meaning.* 

Here then the question of all questions. Here differ- 
ence between man and brute. Here differentiation from 
Material. Here a road outside of the mountain way 
to the garden of the gods. Here the meaning of the 
Brahminical salutation. Here the locality of Heaven. 
Here the Something received or denied by Ego. 
Here explanation of good and bad in men. 

What is Soul ? Like Matter, and like individuality, 
Soul is to be known alone phenomenally. After such 
manner of being known, knowledge of it is, however, 
scarcely less common than is knowledge of individu- 
ality. Every man and woman knows of it according 
to extent of its possession. Not to know it is not to 
have it. 

Soul, according to the philosophy here offered, and 
according to inductions which will accrue, let exami- 
nation commence when it will, is identical with the 
God. 

* See " Man and his World." 



88 SFIRITUS SANCTUS, 

Stop just here, interrupts the Materialist, and tell us 
how and why illuminate Rosicrucianism assumes the 
existence of a God ? 

Proof of the existence of God is found in the exist- 
ence of Soul. Like is to be known only by like. 
Matter can neither see, feel, hear, taste, or smell the 
God. The senses of organic life are the senses of 
animal life. Proof that brutes are without soul is 
found by absence of it in some men. Soul is not at 
all a necessity to the animal organization. A man 
may live without a soul. Soul and God are one. 
What is called soul is simply God dwelling by his sev- 
eralty in man. The Bible expresses this simply, yet 
fully, in the passage, " Keep clean thy heart which is 
the temple of the Holy Ghost." 

To make the matter perfectly clear and to exhibit 
the grandeur of the capability of the human, let us 
instance the position of Christ in history as we have 
learned of it. I will assume for my purpose that the 
account in the Bible is to be relied on implicitly. 
Christ was born after the manner of animals at large. 
As a boy he wrought in a carpenter-shop. Like to 
animals at large, he was made up of matter and indi- 
viduality. Unlike to a multitude, his Ego had no 
advantages, after the ordinary manner, of education. 
At his crucifixion the animal part of him succumbed 
exactly as did the animal parts of the thieves executed 
by his side. The body of Christ was buried. The 
Individuality of Christ was seen later by his disciples. 

Up to this point all is clear to us. Matter died. 
Individuality does not die. Christ was seen risen 
from the dead. Mark ! he was seen. If it be not 



CONCERNING SOUL. 89 

true that he was seen, then the rock upon which the 
Church is built is of less strength than is sandstone. 
Let us go back for a moment in thought. We read 
of Christ as an infant. At his crucifixion we know 
him as of man's stature. He ate and grew. What 
he ate and how he grew differs not a jot from the 
circumstances related with the eating and growing 
of the millions who preceded and who have succeeded 
him. As a human body Christ was a man like unto 
ourselves. He was like unto ourselves or he was not 
flesh. 

But the Christ of the Bible is presented as God. 
The Christ of the Bible is peculiarly, distinctively the 
writer's God. The Christ of the Bible is a pre-emi- 
nent illustration of soul. He is the exposition of 
Man's possible relation with the Divine, and is justly 
a universal example. 

I know Christ to be one with God. Knowing this, 
and feeling that in a few minutes I shall demonstrate 
it, I have not the slightest concern to trouble myself 
with the obscurities of immaculate conceptions as to 
Son and Mother. Science is entirely unable to com- 
prehend these conceptions, nor is it found that Ego or 
Soul takes hold of them after any manner. Immacu- 
late conception is to be a matter of faith, or it is not 
to be at all. Philosophy is the antipodes of faith ; it 
seeks proof, not tradition. It is left for theology to 
deal with immaculate conceptions ; philosophy may 
deal with that only which it is able to comprehend. 

Where and what was the Godhood of the carpenter's 
son? 

Here we start in a demonstration of Soul. 
8* 



po SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Christ had no advantages of education. On a cer« 
tain day, when the boy was about twelve years of age, 
being missed and searched for by his mother, he was 
found in dispute with, and vanquisher of, learned doc- 
tors. That was much, yet it was little. Five hundred 
years before his birth the philosophic age of Greece 
commenced. Up to the period of Christ's teaching 
human intellectual brilliancy had never, and perhaps 
has never since, been equalled. During these five hun- 
dred years system after system of philosophy had been 
advanced and exploded. Now appears this carpenter's 
son. He was unlearned in the lore of the schools. He 
knew nothing of sophistry. To-day, nineteen hun- 
dred years later, the Christian world bows before his 
image, seeing in the man Jesus the Almighty God. 

Seeing what ? Not difference from other men in skin 
and bones and muscles and nerves. Not anything of 
difference as to what shows itself in every man as 
Individuality, — at least philosophy sees not this. Yet 
seeing something that makes three hundred and fifty- 
three millions of the most civilized people of the earth 
worship a carpenter's son. 

Will the reader follow here closely and not misun- 
derstand? With Christ and his mighty power im- 
pressed upon our comprehension, we give a thought to 
what is propounded by the Church as the mystery of 
the incarnation. Yes, a mystery to the Church, the 
confusion of physiology, an object of ridicule to scep- 
tics. Yet no more a mystery, no more a confusion, 
no more an improbability than is the simplest problem 
ever dealt with. 

Between five and six hundred years before the birth 



CONCERNING SOUL. 91 

of Christ there came into the world a Hindoo child 
called Gautama. According to legends, believed im- 
plicitly by four hundred and seventy millions of 
people, the birth of this child was attended with won- 
derful phenomena. All sick people found themselves 
well. Sun, moon, and stars stood still. The earth 
quivered to its centre. It being desirable on an occa- 
sion that Gautama should afford proof of strength and 
skill, the child, grown to boyhood, took up and easily 
used a bow that required the strength of a thousand 
men to bend. Thrumming the string of this bow he 
produced a noise louder than thunder. He placed 
four plantain leaves at each corner of a square and with 
a single flight of his arrow pierced all of them, — so tells 
part of his history. 

Gautama was the son of a king, and came of what 
was known in his country as the warrior caste. As a 
youth he revelled in luxury and in dissipation. There 
came, however, a time when a feeling as to the utter 
vanity of the life he was living seized him. In a 
search directed to finding the means of happiness, a 
profound impression — one, indeed, which is said to 
have influenced him to an entire change of being — was 
made by his meeting with a beggar, a religious devotee, 
one utterly at outs with the world, but who was pos- 
sessed of absolute internal composure and peace. 
Gautama renounced the ordinary life he had been 
living. To him has been given a stupendous conquest 
over humanity ; and, as propounded by Edwin Ar- 
nold, ** though he discountenanced ritual, and declared 
himself, even when on the threshold of Nirvana, to be 
only what all other men might become, the love and 



92 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



gratitude of Asia, disobeying his mandates, have given 
him fervent worship. Forests of flowers are daily 
laid upon his stainless shrine, and countless lips 
hourly repeat the formula, * I take refuge in Buddha.' " 
Four hundred and seventy millions of people are fol- 
lowers of Gautama. 

About the same time with Gautama there was born 
in the kingdom of Loo a child whose name in English 
is Confucius. Among the legends connected with this 
birth is one to the effect that the Ki-lin, a supernatural 
being, who never appeared among men except to an- 
nounce some extraordinary event, visited the garden 
of Shuh-Liang-Heih, the father, leaving there a pre- 
cious stone upon which was inscribed, "A child is 
born, pure as the crystal wave ; he shall be king with- 
out any territorial domain." Confucius started as a 
public teacher when he was twenty-two years of age. 
What he taught, what he has accomplished, the fact 
that he is a very god to the Chinese, need not be en- 
larged on. 

Gautama, Confucius, Mencius, Christ, and the less 
powerful ones, all in their degree, signify the meaning 
and expression of Soul. I commit myself to holding 
the conviction — a conviction which terminates every 
thought of my mind, which shows itself as the ultima- 
tum of all study — that what is called the soul is nothing 
at all different from God taking up residence in man, 
and that the soul possessed by Christ, that which is 
called the Godhood of Christ, is exactly what is in 
you and in me proportionately ; that to become full of 
the God as were Gautama and Christ needs only that 
any man or any woman do as was done. " Do as was 



CONCERNING SOUL. 95 

done." What is meant ? Everybody knows of the ab- 
solute bodily sacrifice of Christ. The man was noth- 
ing, the office was all. In every sense of the word the 
life was a devotion to others. Personally Christ had 
nothing, he wanted nothing. The will of the Father 
was the only will. Gautama, after his twenty-second 
year, came to the same self-abnegation. Of the in- 
comprehensible phenomena described as associated 
with the birth of this latter, we Occidentals do not 
deem ourselves irreligious in taking no account. For 
myself, I did not feel the earth shake, neither did I 
behold the standing still of sun and stars. Candidly 
speaking, I care nothing at all in any way about the 
shaking and the standing still. Look where I will at 
Gautama, look where I may at Christ, I behold God. 
Let the mysteries of incarnation and of shaking plan- 
ets be or not be, for myself, I do not take the trouble 
to confuse my brain in considering them. To me 
these mysteries are not of the slightest concern. I 
need none of them to enable me to behold the God 
walking upon earth in the shape of a man. 

We understand then. The premise is that the 
meaning of human Individuality is to act as agent of 
the God. That God fills Individuality in proportion 
as individuality submits itself to be filled. Under- 
standing Christ after this fashion, I behold him as one 
found so able to sink and abnegate the mortal parts 
that he becomes fully occupied by soul ; otherwise by 
God. This power has the meaning of the divine 
showing itself through the medium of flesh.* 

* On an occasion, St. Thomas Aquinas made a visit to the pope at 
Rome, whom he found in the midst of large wealth. " You see," said 



94 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

Mysteries disappear in an appreciation of their sub- 
jects. There was one Daniel Lambert. His weight 
was seven hundred and thirty-nine pounds. His fat- 
ness made the man known over the reading world. He 
was famous in proportion as rotundity advanced him 
beyond the bulk of other men. Was that corpulency 
any the less wonderful because it existed in a physio- 
logical law that you and I know all about ? 

You and I may invite bodily corpulence. We know 
all about this. We can get fatness if we want fatness. 
Not desiring fatness we can stay lean. The mystery 
of Christ we propound as no greater mystery than 
this of fatness. Christ's godliness can be invited or re- 
pulsed by any man. As fatness is not a necessity to 
animal life, so neither is soul. Man as an animal may 
get along without either fat or soul. Men are propor- 
tionately fat, in like manner are they proportionately 
possessed of soul. 

Let us try to be even clearer. Nobody has any dif- 
ficulty in understanding the oneness of water. To 
recognize severalty in this oneness is only to know that 
moisture and water are one, and that moisture is 
everywhere. What moisture is to water soul is to 
God. Water is the animal life of men. Soul is the 
kingdom of heaven to men. Who diminishes in 
moisture withers and dries up, who lessens in soul finds 



the holy Father, " that it is not as when the Church had to say, silver 
and gold have I none." "Nor is it,'' replied the priest, "as when 
the Church could command the lame to walk, and crutches might 
be thrown aside." This illustrative of difference between presence 
and absence of soul. 



CONCERNING SOUL, 95 

himself getting out of that kingdom of heaven which 
the Bible declares to be within a man.* 

Shall we repeat ? Who will deny that where God is ■ 
there too must be heaven ; seeing, as has been defined, 
that it is the presence of God which constitutes heaven. 
If, then, soul be identical with God, does it not follow 
that the possessor of soul finds himself godly in pro- 
portion to his possession, — that is, does he not find him- 
self in heaven, as he has that which is heaven in him ? 
Consider here a step further. If soul be a good re- 
lated with the present of men, is not heaven a thing 
of to-day, no matter what else it may be ? 

Here hypostases has its conclusion. About any 
heaven or hell of to-morrow we need not trouble our- 
selves. If any man desire heaven, it is always to be 
found immediately at hand. To receive is simply to 
open. To forfeit is simply to keep shut. To be un- 
tenanted by soul is to be void of heaven. 

* The illustration is worked out in the book '• Odd Hours of a 
Physician." 



96 ' SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



•VII. 

CONCERNING PLANE OF RELATION, 
SENSITIVITY, AND SUBJECTIVITY. 

" A man that looks on glass 
On it may stay his eye, 
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, 
And the heavens espy.'* 

Advance is here made to consideration of capabil- 
ity. Man, as to hypostases, is assumed as fairly under- 
stood. The chapter is to consider Egoistic attributes. 
Why, to make question, is one man possessed of genius 
and others not? What and who are the mediums 
and sensitives ? What as to professed inspirations of 
these people? of their lessons taught in dreams and 
visions? of their walks with the God as declared 
by both prophets and heathens? What as to their 
mysterious world which seems to be a world within 
a world ? What as to difference in their eyes and 
the eyes of other persons, and their ears that hear 
what other ears do not hear ? 

Passage is from lower to higher; from compre- 
hensions in physics to speculations in psychics. Yet, 
all law being common law, passage is to nothing 
supernatural, simply to a something not commonly 
familiar. What is to be examined as psychical is to 
be found not at all dissimilar to what has been pre- 
sented as physical ; an only difference lies with plane 
of relation. Let the remark "nothing supernatural" 
make impression. Mediums and sensitives, the subjects 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC, 97 

of the present chapter, differ nothing from people at 
large save as poets, musicians, and architects differ 
from people at large. Sensitivity will always be found 
identical with mediumship, and he or she who happens 
to be born a sensitive, or who cultivates sensitivity to 
the extent of becoming a sensitive, will be a medium 
of greater or less meaning to That which is culti- 
vated, let the that be what it may, common or un- 
common. 

A familiar phrase on the tongue of almost everybody 
is to the effect that ''practice makes perfect." This, 
to put it into the plainest language possible, is what is 
here meant ; the matter and manner of sensitivity, or 
the matter and manner of becoming a medium, are not 
a bit more obscure, not a particle more mysterious ; to 
cultivate is to render one's self capable. 

Poets, musicians, and architects are psychical recip- 
ients become nowadays so familiar that people have 
entirely ceased to look on or talk of them as in any 
wise mysterious personages. The wares of such are 
bought and sold and appreciated according to quality. 
Sensitives, as to other and higher things, are undoubt- 
edly to come to the same common familiarity and gen- 
eral recognition ; this, out of the fact that the mean- 
ing of these latter can be nothing else than absolutely 
one with the meaning of the former. Understanding 
of this common meaning being possessed, it is appre- 
ciated that cultivation of the spiritual is not at all dif- 
ferent, as to principle, from the cultivation of an art 
or a science. To comprehend that there is no differ- 
ence as to such cultivation is to find a road of an 

openness and plainness that the wayfaring man, though 
E ^ 9 



98 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

a fool, can see and walk in, — if it please him so to 
do. 

Appreciation and understanding, after so practical 
a fashion, of the meaning and characteristics of Me- 
diums and Sensitives is the final Rosicrucian step in- 
troductory to intercourse with what is called the spirit- 
ual world ; a world which is, however, to a Rosicrucian 
one with his own ; that is, one with the Universal. 

It has been suggested that **the philosophy of one 
generation becomes the common sense of the next." 
To the nineteenth century Mediums and Sensitives are 
tricksters, otherwise are inspired people, otherwise are 
psychical phenomena. To the twentieth-century peo- 
ple the meaning of Mediumship and Sensitivity, it is 
to be inferred, considering advancing intelligence, will 
have become sufficiently settled and familiar to allow 
of entire understanding of common intercourse capable 
of being established between so-called mortals and so- 
called immortals. To express this after other manner, 
it is not at all unlikely that before the immediately 
succeeding century shall have passed away mystery as 
to higher relations will be found so opened and illu- 
mined that oneness as to the universal will be under- 
stood not alone by the initiated, as at present, but by 
people at large. How devoutly to be wished for is 
consummation as to such intelligence ! Mystery as to 
relations, where openness is a necessity, is an excuse, 
and a valid one, not only for unbelief, but for the ex- 
treme of irreligiousness \ an intelligent man who is 
directed to the top of a building expects to find in- 
cluded in the directions a stairway or ladder. Mystery, 
as illustrated in a hundred different beliefs, held by a 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC, 99 

hundred different sects, is no strengthener of faith; 
people doubt where it is found that professors do not 
agree. 

Here the holder of the present pen risks nothing in 
a declaration that he is without occasion for simple be- 
lief through hearsay as to the existence of Mediums 
(otherwise Sensitives), as he knows positively of the 
existence of such people; a knowledge which the 
reader of any degree will recognize as being a posses- 
sion of his own if he consider for a single moment the 
poets, the musicians, and the architects ; indeed, if he 
consider simply the adept money changers. 

Mediums and Sensitives resolved, through such con- 
sideration, into ordinary individuals, the holder of 
the pen is freed from hesitation as to a declaration that 
both by nature and education he discovers in himself 
a medium. In discovery of this first great fact a sec- 
ond of much larger importance has shown itself, — 
namely, that mediumship, otherwise expressed, that 
nearness to, or distance from, spiritual things, as with 
any other thing or things, rests entirely with a man's 
self; Luther, for example, walking with God in the 
morning, and hurling inkstands at the devil in the 
afternoon. 

That the largest possible interest shall be carried to 
chapters succeeding this present one, which chapters 
are indeed the origin and meaning of the book only, 
that, considering the materialistic character of readers 
generally, the pages would have been entirely miscom- 
prehended, if not led to, by what has here been put be- 
fore them, the holder of the pen is merely to announce 
that it is an intention to illustrate mediumship at large. 



lOO SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

as this priceless possession is to be enjoyed by perhaps 
any and every person, and as certainly he finds himself 
able to possess, and as well to lose, the faculty. 

Let iteration here be appreciated as to oneness in the 
Universal. There is no death. There could not be 
such a thing as death and the Universal exist. There 
are no two worlds. What is called Spiritual is one 
with what is called material. Degrees of sight, appre- 
ciation, comprehension, apprehension, are, with sensi- 
tivity, natural or acquired, precisely and after no other 
manner, as before presented, as sight or comprehen- 
sion finds itself capable of beholding in water things 
most unlike to what bears this common name. To 
simple sciolists water is known as nothing else than 
water. By chemists water is found to be a combina- 
tion of the gases oxygen and hydrogen. By micro- 
scopists water-drops are discovered as seas provided 
for the delectation and accommodation of swimming 
monsters. 

To affirm one's self a medium from the stand-point 
of practice or of cultivation is to say nothing different 
from what has just been said as to sciolist, chemist, 
and microscopist ; difference as to what is seen, lies 
with a seer. 

What is to follow is, then, Subjectivism, proposed 
as a thing not any more mysterious than is Materialism ; 
the two, indeed, being assumed as scarcely so much 
two as one ? 

Precisely ; proposing that manner of a revelation is 
the same in the instance of a poet as revelations re- 
ceived by John at Patmos, as sights and sounds seen 
and heard by Saul, as visions given to Hosea, to 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC. loi 

Habakkuk, to Haggai, to Zechariah, and, as well, to 
Belshazzar. 

What as to diseased conditions hinted at in a suc- 
ceeding chapter on Disillusions ? 

It is there exhibited that, as with the productions 
of the poets, the musicians, and the architects, quality 
and significance settle the value of a production. 
One-sidedness is not harmony. Sensitives are one- 
sided, — necessarily so when in a state of receptivity. 
One-sidedness to any particular subject or business is 
little- or no-sidedness to antagonizing things. It is 
easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle 
than for a non-soulistic person to behold and un- 
derstand what are clearly seen and comprehended by 
the religious. There is not the slightest mystery asso- 
ciated with the suggestion concerning rich men and 
camels ; no more certainly than is associated with the 
general understanding of a poverty commonly endured 
by the poets. A rich man makes of himself a sensi- 
tive to his possessions ; his thoughts being constantly 
with these, are necessarily abstracted from other things ; 
to see things in the sky and things upon the ground 
is simply a matter of how one looks; the holder of 
the present pen finds himself crowded and jammed 
into the eye by reason of a dozen or so brick houses 
he is trying to pull through with him. Half concen- 
tration is nothing less than confusion where whole 
concentration is necessary to clearness. Men are to be 
likened to balloons, both being things which go up or 
stay down according to what is inside. 

There is perhaps no better book to read with a view 
to getting understanding of mediums and sensitives, 
9* 



I02 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

diseased or otherwise, than a work much prized by 
Catholics entitled *' Lives of the Saints." Professed 
saints of old seem to have been little different from 
professed mediums of to-day. As these lives appeal to 
nineteenth century sense, St. Charles Borromeo may 
justly be continued in the place occupied by the godly 
Cardinal; charity, love, endurance, self-abnegation 
shone forth in every action ; the Christly in the man 
appealed, and not in vain, to defects as to morals in 
the clergy that needed reforming ; the plague-stricken 
and dying lying in pest-houses found the Archbishop 
continuously at their side; his great worldly wealth 
was dropped at the needle's eye. As a contrary it 
may not be unjust to name Saint Simeon Stylites. 
Holding to rags, festering his flesh by tying rough 
ropes about his waist, living for years upon the top of 
a pillar not more than four feet across, performing 
through a whole lifetime penance of offensive and dis- 
gusting character, nineteenth century sense would in- 
cline to pronounce such living not less selfish than 
useless, not less expressive of dementia than of dis- 
cord.* Stories recounted, not in this book, but in 
others equally to be credited, of experience possessed 
through peculiar and special sensibility residing with 
St. Theresa and with St. Catharine de Sienne show 
these saints in a debatable light to all save the 
physiologists; these, out of understanding, remand 

* Yet while nineteenth century sense would thus pronounce of St. 
Simeon there is to be considered an influence exerted on an age 
where mystery rather than reason influenced. It is scarcely to be 
denied that the Stylite, or rather his actions, exerted wonderful influ- 
ences in enlarging what is commonly esteemed the religious relation. 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC. 103 

the sisters to the physicians. What is meant is that 
these wholly to be revered and godly and pre-eminently 
spiritually favored women cultivated sensitivity to an 
extent which quite outran the capability of confessors 
to direct or even follow them, indeed which quite out- 
ran, as it would seem, the capability of a flesh-environed 
mortal to receive or contain. Their own inclined to 
believe them gone crazy, at times, out of reason of not 
understanding a relation existing between sensitivity 
and a portion of the brain apparatus known as the 
cerebellum. 

Concerning what the ages characterize as illusions or 
as revelations, Rosicrucianisra troubles itself to differ- 
entiate simply as qualities and significations weigh. It 
knows how closely sensitivity allies itself always with 
conditions favorable to hallucinations. It has found 
out that the line separating the extremely crazy from 
the extremely wise is not always easily determinable. 

What, however, is given out by sensitives is never 
any line at all. Question is to deal with what a sensitive 
says; with what he has to tell. Christ, Gautama, Bor- 
romeo, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ignatius, St. Francis 
of Sales, together with a host, Christians, Jews, and 
heathens, command adoration as to the Divine as this 
is found exhibiting itself through flesh. 

Rosicrucianism, however, while it weighs solely by 
quality, is yet appreciative of discrimination residing 
with understanding. Illustration of what is implied is 
to be made familiar by numerous conditions which 
suggest themselves in the physical unlikeness of people. 
Here, for example, is one capable of being fully ap- 
preciated by any person attracted to the study of books 



104 



SPIKITUS SANCTUS. 



of the present character. Patients come to a surgeon 
for treatment of astigmatism. Is astigmatism an hal- 
lucination or is it a fact ? An astigmatic declares the 
crookedness of a line that is perfectly straight to ordi- 
nary people. An astigmatic denies the very existence 
of a line that I behold plainly. How is this conflict 
of assertion to be settled ? I start by measuring the 
cornea of my own eye and find it to be a perfect seg- 
ment of a perfect circle. I pass to the eye of the 
astigmatic, and here I find that there is not a perfect 
segment of a perfect circle. Finding difference, I am 
led to appreciate that proof or disproof of an astig- 
matic's assertions is to be made if a possibility exists 
of putting my own eyes in exact shape with the eyes of 
a patient. Learning that this change in eye-form is to 
be accomplished by means of glasses ground to corre- 
spond with the measurements of the eyes of the person 
considered, I use such lens, and at once find that what 
the astigmatic declares as to seeing and not seeing is 
quite as true to him as ordinary seeing and not seeing 
are to me. Now, after a not dissimilar manner, I find 
that ability exists to comprehend Sensitivity, and, as 
well, to make it. The matter I learn lies here, not, 
however, with glasses, but with cultivation existing in 
concentration. To cultivate poetry is, I discover, to 
attract the Muse. To cultivate music is to invite the 
melodious. To concentrate on the psychical is to find 
the Ego looking on other things beside brick and 
mortar. 

Here, however, doctorly sense of danger as alluded 
to in chapter on *' Disillusions." Profoundly inter- 
ested at one period of professional life in the study 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC, io5 

referred to, astigmatism, it was a habit to place my own 
optical apparatus in exactly the same condition tempo- 
rarily as that of every Astigmatic met with in practice. 
A consequence is, the eyes are more or less permanently 
altered from an original condition to correspondence 
with those of the people whose habits have been as- 
sumed. 

As regards cultivation of Sensitivity to a sight of, 
and to relation with things not seeable by or relatable 
with the unsensitized, this is a matter of not unlike 
signification as is, perhaps, wisely to be taken into the 
account, to that which considers the desirability of 
growing things, as by hothouse forcing out of season. 
The peach is a fruit of midsummer; it can, however, 
be made to show itself in midwinter. If let alone, a 
peach comes in its proper season. Is it better to force 
the peach or to let it alone ? 

A Sensitive, as interpreted in the cases of great 
poets or musicians, is found, not unlikely, to become 
lost or indifferent to things which are of ordinary 
every-day concern ; such persons come to be unfitted 
for the battlings of to-day, as to-day is with them. 

But as to living two lives at once ! Whether, as 
queried by Rosicrucians, it is or is not desirable to live 
double in one and the same body ? Whether or not 
the law of the peach which provides for the fruit 
coming in its season is not better than acquired intelli- 
gence which can bring peaches out of season ? 

Philosophy and man are identical. Without man 
there would be no philosophy. The two being one, it 
is not to be disputed that the one has capability to 
know itself. Assuredly it will not be disputed that 



lo6 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

what IS not possibly knowable to the one is of no con- 
cern to the one. 

Is it possible to find, in the Universal, other entities 
beside the three named in preceding chapters ? The 
Creative power is universal, whether maker of things 
above the earth or under it. Matter is universal, 
whether as the planet Uranus or as a ring of Saturn. 
Ego is universal to him who is Ego. Knowing itself, 
it exists to itself. 

But the way of the mountain? Are principles, 
which explain everything, to be understood save as 
grasp is gotten of them through study of detail ? Ini- 
tiates are born and Initiates are made. He is to know 
himself as initiate, whether born so or made so, who, 
standing where we now are, espies the key of the gar- 
den. He, on the contrary, is to know himself as not 
initiate who as yet perceives nothing different from the 
beginning and intermediate of way. 

One not come to comprehension is to make a new 
start with beginning ; otherwise, having understanding 
of the invisibility of matter, he is to accept that Key 
is perceived and possessed by others ; he is to go back 
or he is to follow the key-bearers. 

A multitude will go back ; if not this, will remain 
where they find themselves, making no advance. The 
Key obtained and held by Rosicrucians is not of itself 
the garden of the gods, but it is means of entrance to 
the Subjective world. By this it is not at all meant, 
as certainly is recognized, that a key-bearer has come 
to a day or point of any special translation. What 
he has come to is appreciation, through understanding, 
of the existence of a psychical life which every human 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC, 107 

is capable of living. He has learned how serene, how 
beautiful, how rich a territory there is within a man's 
self. Philo he proves to be right in his saying that 
''between life and death there is no difference." He 
has come to understanding with Socrates and Plato 
and Plotinus, and perceives the immateriality of that 
which knows self as self. While a mortal he recog- 
nizes himself as immortal. While finding his means 
of sight to be with eyes, he has learned that there are 
eyes back of eyes. To-morrow is nothing at all to 
him. Yesterday is as though it had not been. 

To die, as men call dying, he knows is to dream, as 
men call dreaming. To dream or to die is absolutely 
one. The environment found by Ego in dreams, as he 
has learned, is never less adapted to requirements than 
the environments existing with Ego in the waking 
state. . . . Casting a whole body, he has found out, 
is quite analogous with the casting of single atoms. A 
probable seventy pounds lost in his house by an ema- 
ciated consumptive he understands as not a whit of 
different history from other seventy which, through 
funereal pomp, gets into the long grass, the tree leaves, 
and the odorous flowers of the God's acre. 

The absolute, the unchangeable belief of him who 
holds the present Rosicrucian pen is that what is called 
death finds perfect illustration in common nightly 
dreams. No dreamer knows that he dreams. Death 
is not known to him who is said to have died. Death 
is that beginning of a new end wherein an acorn buries 
itself under mould that fresh environment be gotten for 
other centuries of life as a great mast in the forest. 
Death is the law in creation through which ponderable 



lo8 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

changes to imponderable. Death is one with progres- 
siveness. Death is one with unseeable body. Death 
is one with liberty enjoyed by a butterfly over a cater- 
pillar. Death is one with an advance which is the 
meaning of man. Death is its own demonstration of 
oneness with life. Death is a crooked finger replaced 
by a straight one. Death is cumbersome gotten rid 
of for felicitous. Death is flight for him who has been 
working at the cultivation of wings. Death is what 
Living makes it. 

Now concerning this invisibility into which the so- 
called dead depart. 

There is but one Universe. Visible and Invisible 
are in it. As has been demonstrated with Matter, visi- 
ble and invisible are one. He who travels in a dream 
travels as one awake, only by the former water is found 
to support and atmosphere to hold up. A dreamer is 
stopped by no turnpike gate ; he needs no conveyance 
from continent to continent; he finds himself as pure 
Ego. Still materialized, he differs from the old self 
alone and only as matter differs through its phenomenal 
expressions. Celestial, while one with terrestrial, is 
yet of relation with wider and freer action ; this, in a 
sense, as birds fly while worms creep. A dreamer sees 
everything while himself unseeable. A dreamer finds 
a new state while utterly unconscious that the state is 
not the common lot of everything and everybody. 

Now comes the last and greatest question of Rosi- 
crucianism. Can intercourse be had between the so- 
called living and the so-called dead ? 

Here the circle and meaning of Subjectivism. Here 
Subjectivism to be appreciated as one with Occultism. 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC. 109 

Here understanding and demonstration. Here the 
secret of the higher plane. Here, too, self-deception. 
Here, as well, the richest and most beautiful reality of 
the Universal. He who has been led to understand 
Subjectivism understands the seeing a spirit.* In ex- 
actly like manner, as has been made plain, as spirits 
are to be seen, are unbuilt cathedrals seen and unsung 
melodies heard; devils and gods and churches and 
songs are everywhere that ability to see them is, and 
are not anywhere where ability to see them is not. Let 
long pause be made here for consideration. Here is 
the mystery, the only, the sole mystery, of seeing spirits 
with spirit eyes. Every published strain of music has 
been heard by a musician before being written. No 
architectural design exists upon earth which was not 
first a vision to the architect. Who sees God, devil, 
or angels, sees after a common manner ; there is but 
one manner. Let him who is able analyze ; every end 
must have a means; sight of an objective thing is 
after its manner, sight of a subjective thing is after its 
manner. 

The Human, as understood, is an immortal. He is 
then always seeable by that which is able to see. A 
departed mortal being, quite as likely as otherwise to 
be in a familiar locality, as understandable in dreams, 
familiar places are where the departed are to be looked 
for; not always, however, are home haunts the place 
where search is to be made, as is equally illustrated in 
dreams where attenuated environment is taken advan- 

* The word Spirit is used for the reason that it implies to readers 
generally what in the language of the Occultist is known as Umbratile 
or shadow ; what the Germans call the Doppelgaenger of a person. 

10 



no SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

tage of to rise to heights of association never attained 
in the flesh. 

The Universe is high, and broad, and deep. Height 
of association is, however, of no relation with altitude. 
It is not at all strange that the Ego of the dream is 
found often enough lost to a consciousness of old asso- 
ciations. With new clothes have come new looks. 
With refined environments is forgetfulness or indiffer- 
ence to coarse attributes. 

But is there possible relation between the so-esteemed 
two worlds? Surely! Else is the Christian Bible an 
untruth and the great doctrine of Exclusion a lie. 
Again, there are not two worlds, the Universal is one. 

But as to the Relater, the Seer. What or where is 
association between the materialized and the so-called 
dematerialized ? 

Let answer to this beautiful question be made after 
the manner of the initiates. 

Any man or woman who courts higher planes than 
the one upon which he or she finds himself or herself, 
will approach or reach these exactly in proportion as 
efforts are directed to accomplishment. The chapter 
in the present volume entitled "Psychics" is to show 
doctorly knowledge taking alarm at what Occultist or 
poet recognizes and receives as the highest and greatest 
favors conferable on man. The holder of a pen seats 
himself in stillness emptying head and heart of ordi- 
nary every-day concerns. Soon imaginations constitute 
new surroundings. Imaginations assume materializa- 
tion. Faces, forms, lines, buildings, show plainly. 
Subjective exhibits as one with Objective. Continuing 
to court such a world new will surely take the place of 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC. m 

old. Continuing to look what is looked for will reveal 
itself. 

— Only a repetition, what has just been said, of the 
biblical expression **the kingdom of heaven is within 
a man." 

Sight is proportioned with that which is the user of 
sight. Here, however, as elsewhere the universe over, 
is no miracle, or if miracle, man is his own miracle- 
maker. 

To see hideous crawling monsters in a particle of 
cheese, or more frightful swimming creatures in a drop 
of water, or wriggling serpents in an atom of vinegar, is 
a process of means to ends, nothing different. Matter 
itself is understood as being invisible. What is not 
seeable by the eyeless, however, is evident enough to 
one who has eyes. The keen-sighted see plainly what 
is wholly without existence to a myope. The telescopist 
and the microscopist see and understand where the ordi- 
narily keen-sighted are blind. So, after a like develop- 
ment, does an initiated Rosicrucian see new environ- 
ments arising out of old ones. 

A sensitive, as inferred now to be clearly understood, 
is one who out of temperament or education is found 
concentrated in a given direction. A money-making 
sensitive is one who concentrates on the rise and fall 
of the market. A musical sensitive is one who listens 
eternally for sounds unheard by the money-maker by 
reason of rattle and confusion with which the latter 
surrounds himself. A poet is alert to rhymes unreal 
to everybody but himself, but which he catches and 
holds, showing thus their reality. Romanesque and 
Mediaeval sensitives wandered among round and angu- 



112 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

lar interlacing branches of trees and beheld visions of 
Gothic arches. Christian sensitives waited at the gate 
of the tomb for the coming forth ; the reward was in 
seeing while the unsensitive remained blind. Not dif- 
ferent is it in the present day, A multitude see Christ, 
a greater multitude see nothing of Him, — nothing at 
all of the grand meaning of Christ. 

Sensitivity cannot see what does not exist. Poetry 
is not made by the poet, nor architecture by the archi- 
tects, nor music by the musicians. 

Sensitivity, this meaning the same as exceptional 
discernment, is a state of natural or cultivated nervous 
organization, otherwise it is directly in Ego, consti- 
tuting a condition where the ordinary senses are dupli- 
cated by refined processes as are the common eyes by 
telescope or microscope. 

Visions are seen and are seeable. That a multitude 
of visions are deceptions practised on the senses, and 
that another multitude are resultant of disease lying 
with the self-same senses, is not to be gainsaid by any 
one who will advance his studies to a succeeding 
chapter. It is the object of the recitals to make this 
very plain. 

But if here the reader finds himself prepared to 
rise above deceptions and confusions with a view to 
understanding, or perhaps to cultivating, the conditions 
of a sensitive, a spiritual sensitive, searching after God 
and the immortals, he will indeed soon find himself 
"looking after new fashion," as may be promised, 
" beholding and understanding many new and beauti- 
ful things," if, indeed, he shall not behold and under- 
stand the Universal. 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC. 113 

Here a few concluding words concerning what is to 
follow and what is to be referred to in the chapter on 
Psychics as visions. 

If the reader having the volume in hand happens to 
be of sensitive organization, he will be apt to find that 
by closing the eyes and concentrating the attention on 
a desire to behold faces, image after image will appear 
before him. These images are more or less familiar to 
a little multitude of people and are esteemed produc- 
tions of the imagination. In this concentration is the 
full secret of the Yoga system of Hindoo philosophy ; 
the secret is nothing greater than this, it is not any- 
thing less. 

To say nothing as to any supernatural relation, con- 
centration is a matter of great scientific interest, nor 
is it possible to indulge in it without finding brought 
to our knowledge things which serve to astonish and 
overwhelm. What is to be described is to be under- 
stood as Subjectivism. The measure of things to be 
seen is one with the measure of the meaning and pur- 
pose of a percipient. 

Does Rosicrucianism, not to specify him who holds 
the present pen, believe in the honesty, the sanity, and 
the truthfulness of people who tell of visions? To 
doubt or deny is to doubt or deny what is being ad- 
vanced and explained in these pages. Assuredly, what 
is told by the people referred to may be true, — true 
to them ; not true, however, to other people. Mistake 
on the part of sensitives seeing apparitions lies with 
non-comprehension on their part as to difference be- 
tween subjective and objective, or, to put this in other 
h 10* 



114 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



language, not comprehending as to difference between 
ideal and corporeal. Here is great paradox to under- 
stand. Let the reader stop and think. A Fulton tries 
and tries and succeeds eventually in materializing a 
steamboat. A Stephenson tries and tries and succeeds 
at last in materializing a locomotive. Now, it is the 
case that what is seen by a sensitive of the spiritual 
type is precisely one in principle with what is seen by 
a Fulton or a Stephenson. If it is to be admitted that 
the one can materialize, similar capability is not too 
hastily to be denied the other. 

The subject of the assumption of material attributes 
by a dematerialized Ego is inviting attention from 
the people learned in a psychical direction. Accept- 
ing as undeniable the persistence of Ego after loss 
of its ordinary material environment, and accepting 
of oneness as to the Universal and oneness as to the 
Now and eternity, and accepting, further, the many 
illustrations in such direction vouched for in the Bible 
as to such character of materializations, there are cer- 
tainly sufficient excuses for examination and inquiry. 

Here ground is approached which is dangerous, in- 
asmuch as what is to be said furnishes certain endorse- 
ment of unconscionable impostors who fatten on the 
credulity of the ignorant. It is familiar to almost 
every one that a Pythoness, of Delphia, was not in 
any sense supposed to speak of herself, that her spirit 
of divination lay in use made of her materialization 
by an Ego, existing apart from her own, which Ego 
dispossessed, as to the body, her particular self, using 
the organ of voice for its oracular utterances, which 
utterances were accepted as highest truths and wisdom 
by the Greeks. 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC, 115 

It being not possible to exclude from associations 
here arrived at the vulgarisms of modern spiritism and 
confusions of a more serious nature which exist to the 
confounding of men, attempt is to be made, not only 
as to the conclusions of the present chapter, but in 
others that are to succeed, to lead away from, or 
through, the mire. 

Denial as to possibilities is not to run too fast nor 
too uncharitably. There is a story, believed by mil- 
lions of people who are not at all disposed to credulity, 
that tells of an ass which opened its mouth and spake 
to Balaam. 

It is an exhibition to astonish ''common sense'* to 
behold grouped about a materializing medium a num- 
ber of people who affirm to the recognition of hus- 
bands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers of great pro- 
portions, and sisters long ago passed away in the stat- 
ure of infantile years, all of which people are without 
doubt as to the truthfulness of the manifestations 
beheld, even though in the moment of presentment 
the hand of an unbeliever holds and shows the person- 
ality in the shape, form, and individuality of a dis- 
guised medium. "It is," say the sensitives, "exactly 
as shown. The body held in the grasp is a body of 
flesh ; but at the moment of touch an aura which occu- 
pied it took flight." Ridiculous, supremely ridicu- 
lous this, to "common sense." Yet a little educated 
sense perceives that the claim differs not a jot from 
the biblical one concerning Balaam's ass. 

Digression might be made here recalling to the 
individual reader what, at one time or another, has 
been seen by himself, or, more particularly, by herself, 



Ij6 sfiritus sanctus. 

women being the greater sensitives. A gentleman of 
legal education, and at the same time of a sensitivity 
that has made him a poet, tells the holder of the pen 
the following incident ; A short time back, lying upon 
a rug in his room, he was startled to see the door open 
and his father, who was then a thousand miles distant 
on a journey, enter, walk round the apartment to a 
sofa, where he seated himself. The reciter jumped up, 
ran toward the image with outstretched hand, having 
at the moment not the slightest doubt as to the reality 
of the appearance, finding the vision disappear as it 
was about to be touched. Persons at large, recalling 
such experiences, are to know themselves sensitives 
according to the number and clearness of the behold- 
ings. The incident related as occurring with the 
lawyer is appreciated as existing purely in the subjec- 
tive; what was seen was wholly within, not with- 
out. The matter, however, is not so much here as 
with what is referred to as Objective Materializations ; 
that is, intangible Ego assuming form by occupying 
temporarily other bodies. Common sense repeats as 
to the absurdity of all such things ; but, in doing this, 
"common sense" denies and derides necessarily the 
Christian's Bible. Deuteronomy xxxi. 15 recites as 
follows : " And the Lord appeared in the tabernacle in 
a pillar of a cloud : and the pillar of the cloud stood 
over the door of the tabernacle." 

Another passage looking toward the same meaning 
is to be read in Genesis, chapter iii. 4, 5 : " And the 
serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, 
for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, 
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC. 



117 



gods, knowing good and evil." Here, if the passage 
means anything outside of reference to a purely subjective 
voice, such voice as is heard often enough in dreams, 
or even by ears in the wakeful state, such voice as is 
familiar to perhaps every person of sensitive organiza- 
tion living, it means the aura, or possession, claimed 
by modern spiritists as witnessed in the instances of 
materialization seances ; the recital means nothing at 
all or it means that an Ego took possession of and 
occupied the materiality of a serpent. 

A gentleman who at the time of the occurrence of the 
incident was a surgeon in the navy, now a prominent 
professor in a medical school of Philadelphia, relates 
to the writer that during a yellow fever epidemic he 
was taken sick with the disease, and passed, in its 
progress, to what was esteemed by his attendants the 
death-point. He relates vividly the story of a wonder 
that overwhelmed him as he found himself standing 
looking down on an inanimate body which was rec- 
ognized as his own. 

To see in one's self, as do the sensitives, is in no sense 
the same as seeing with another. This former aspect 
of spiritualism is the only one of which the holder of 
the pen has real knowledge. Confusion, however, 
need not exist even in relation with the latter. A pro- 
fessed embodiment may always be measured after the 
manner of taking a thing for what it shows itself to 
be worth. What a Pythoness tells is the matter for 
consideration, not the manner of telling. Should a 
donkey that might happen to belong to the holder of 
the pen suddenly open its mouth and give utterance to 
pearls of thought, it would not unwisely be accepted 



ri8 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

that voice had driven out and replaced bray; the holder 
of the pen would assuredly accept this. Should the 
holder of the pen be brought in any future relation 
with wisdom or experience above the lore of surround- 
ings and possibilities of an occasion where a professed 
materialization should be before him, his judgment 
would be made up precisely as in the case of the 
donkey. Standing where he now stands, the judgment 
could be made up after no other manner. 

The manner of communication of like with like is 
one that appeals not less to common than to educated 
sense ; milk mingles itself in the oneness of milk, water 
in the oneness of water, oil in the oneness of oil. 
Ego, continuously looking away from body toward 
soul will assuredly, sooner or later, catch sight of the 
God. Sounds are best heard by one who is alert as to 
ears. The inner eyes keeping themselves inward come 
to increasing acquaintance with what is internal. This 
is subjectivism ; it is subjectivism which develops as 
the man refines ; which is understandable in proportion 
as man understands himself. 

It is, however, not at all strange that with internal 
are confusions and deceptions ; these are certainly met 
with as to externals. Worldly wise means to act with 
worldly judgment. It is assuredly the case that worldly 
judgments have the single simple meaning of acting in 
the light of experiences and comparisons. 

Sensitives, as a rule, — here we dismiss the cabinet pic- 
tures, — are unconscious as to the existence of such an- 
tagonizing conditions as mental myopia, hypermetropia, 
presbyopia, astigmatism. Instruments, as the rule rather 
than as the exception, are faulty; they turn, twist, 



CONCERNING MEDIUMS, ETC. ug 

and bend even light-rays in wrong directions. The 
grammar of a poem is seldom according to the rules 
of a sphere on which the poetry is to be read. De- 
signs have to be touched here, there, and all around 
in order to show harmony. One looking into the 
apparent mystery of clairvoyance or of clairaudience 
differentiates according as he is able to differentiate. 



What follows as to the next two chapters contains 
the proposition that a thing corresponds with what is 
found in it. 



I20 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 



•VIII. 

DETAILS. 

Treating of the nearness of the Ridiculous to the Sublinjje, and 
the danger of losing the latter by not separating it from the former. 

Concerning certain once ctirious things now become common, illus- 
trating that the philosophy of one generation becomes the common 
sense of the next. 

Shall a man not believe that he sees what he sees, or may he 
doubt that he has heard what he has heard? 

Neither denying nor accepting, but looking without prejudice 
into a matter that is presented, is a proper manner of reception. 
Having in mind things that have preceded the present page and 
others which are to follow, reference is to be made to the chapter 
treating of Sensitivity and Mediumism ; with that chapter lying 
the opening of the analysis of Subjectivity. Subjectivity is a 
Rosicrucian's word for the familiar one of every-day speech. 
Imagination. An imagination is the first beholding by an in- 
ventor of what he is said to invent. It is also one with num- 
berless apparently silly things talked abcyit and dreamed about 
by people at large. With inventor and people, however, there 
is difference without difference. Here a great paradox. Un- 
derstanding of this paradox is a Rosicrucian's key to the Ar- 
canum. 

A few years back the multitude were agog on the subject of 
seeing spirits ; at the present time the tide runs the other way. 
Changing the word Spiritualism for its equivalent Subjectivism, 
and assuming a reader fully possessed of the width of definition 
of the latter term, spirits and no spirits are found alike realities, 
and so with the runners either way is like justification. Objec- 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 121 

tive and Subjective are the commcn distinctions of the day, signi- 
fying real and unreal. Error is with the '* common distinctions." 
Real and unreal are one. Objective things are phenomenal ; so 
also are subjective things. Nothing is otherwise than as it is to 
a sense that uses it. The seeing of spirits drops its mystery in 
presence of this wholly undeniable fact, and attests its truth. 
Here, however, is confusion to all who do not know that what are 
called Imaginations are of nearer approach, if possible, to the so- 
esteemed real than are such handleable things as pages of poetry, 
scores of music, steamboats, and locomotives. Nobody can un- 
derstand invention who does not understand subjectivism. In- 
vention is identical with revelation. An inventor is inventor by 
reason of being a sensitive. A sensitive, as understood, is an 
impressionable person. 

Copying, in place of inventing, is the manner in which inven- 
tion is to be looked at if subjectivism is to be analyzed. Every- 
thing that is, or that is to be, has awaited or awaits a sensitivity 
refined enough for the perception. An illustration exists in origi- 
nal as contrasted with present perception of things lying with 
electricity. Certainly the wonderful capability as now employed 
lying with electricity was with it at beginning. What was not at 
beginning were the electrical sensitives or geniuses. 

What immediately follows is much more likely to prove intro- 
ductory to an arcanum than what has preceded. The haven is 
worthy the voyage, however accomplished. 

The pages treat of tricks and, possibly, of hallucinations not 
understood by him who writes about them ; certainly little un- 
derstood by people who look with staring eyes one day and with 
mocking lips on another day. Question is not with legerdemain 
or with pathological optic lobes, but with lesson. What is a 
suggestion residing with a trick ? What as to a sight beheld by 
an eye, whether diseased or otherwise ? Most practically ex- 
pressed, is an invention that had its vision in a something most 
dissnnilar to itself a reality or a myth? — for example, steam 
emerging from the spout of a kettle turning itself into a mighty 
steam-ship. 

F II 



122 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Recitals here given are descriptive of meetings between a Dr. 
W. and the doctor vv^ho vi^rites, in a common search made by the 
two into the claims of modern spiritism. 

It was accepted as start that, as unsensitized people are con- 
cerned, the occult is without way of making its existence recog- 
nized save by manifestations to the common five senses. Shall 
a man not believe that he sees what he sees, or may he doubt that 
he has heard what he has heard ? It is to be accepted that the 
records here made have been put down with regard to closeness 
and accuracy of detail after the most careful manner at the com- 
mand of the writer. It is also desired to lay emphasis on the 
fact that common sense, or, to better express this, the common 
senses, were exercised to the utmost extent of their vigilance to 
detect and explain the presence and nature of the mysterious 
agency at work in the manifestations described. 

The attention of the doctor who writes and of his confrkre was 
first directed in the way of investigation, to occult phenomena, by 
an unexpected experience that occurred to the former, and which 
was as follows : 

On the afternoon of a certain day in the fall of i8 — a gentleman 
of great learning, well advanced in years, the son of a father who, 
prior to his departure from material environment, was among the 
most famous of the professors in Philadelphia's university, dropped 
into the doctor's office, kindly bringing an invitation for a meeting 
with a widely-known writing medium whom he had engaged for 
an entertainment to be held at his house in the evening. 

To say that the invited one was not delighted at an opportunity 
which was to afford intercourse with a something of which he had 
heard much yet seen nothing would be to dissemble indeed. The 
hour of appointment was anxiously awaited, and when arrived 
found him amongst the first of arrivals. Not the very first, however, 
for on entering the room he beheld himself preceded by a judge of 
wide prominence and a physician scarcely less celebrated ; besides 
these, by some half-dozen ladies, a general of the army, and a 
retired merchant of fortune. Seated at the piano, quietly thrum- 
ming out a half-played tune, was an unassuming, modest, and 
honest-looking man who was presented as the medium. 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 123 

Looking quite out of place with elegant surroundings, there 
lay upon the piano a bundle done up in ordinary coarse wrapping- 
paper, which, when opened, was seen to contain a dozen common 
slates ; the package having remained undisturbed, as explained by 
the host, that his guests might see it exactly as received from a 
store where the purchase had been made, and which had been 
entered for the first and only time a couple of hours before. 

A few minutes of general conversation was followed by an 
invitation given the judge, the physician, and the writer to take 
each a couple of the slates and to pass, with the medium, to a 
large circular table occupying the centre of a dining-room directly 
across a hall from the parlor in which we sat. Over this table 
was a chandelier of many burners, all of them blazing brilliantly; 
upon it were a number of sheets of ordinary fool's-cap paper and 
several lead-pencils. 

Being seated, and quiet observed at the request of the medium, 
question was made as to whether or not spirits were present. 
After a little while faint knocks were heard as if coming from the 
under surface of the table, the faintness of which seemed to the 
discomfiture of the medium, signifying, as he asserted, absence 
of interest on the part of any spirits present in the individuals 
assembled. Attempts to get slate-writing resulted in absolute 
failure. 

Response to questions becoming dimmer and dimmer, interest 
and curiosity subsided, and a move was made towards the salon 
with a view to joining the other company. The slates, carried by 
the writer with intention of returning them to the pile, happened 
by accident to be in a lifted hand, which position brought them in 
close relation to the head, and while crossing the hall he heard, 
to his unspeakable surprise, scratching as if writing was being 
done upon them by a pencil. This being observed by the 
medium, who was directly at his side, decided a return to the 
table, where occurred the following series of incidents : — 

" Is there," asks the medium, " a spirit present who desires to 
communicate?" To say that the responsive knocks were vigorous 
is scarcely to express it. So impressed was the medium that he 
declared unhesitatingly that no question could be asked that 



124 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

would not have answer. The sitter was requested to write upon 
strips of paper the names of three persons deceased who he could 
have any reason to suppose might have desire to hold communi- 
cation with him. At this time he had just finished writing, under 
what seemed some odd circumstances, the book " Two Thousand 
Years After;" and as this volume is an attempt to carry to its con- 
clusion the argument of the Phsedo as to the immortality of the 
soul, and its composer was full of the association, he wrote the 
names Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. These slips were rolled into 
little balls and laid in front of the medium, who, taking up each 
in turn, asked if it stood for a spirit present. To these questions 
there being no response, it was accepted that further inquirj' might 
be made. 

It would indeed be beneath the dignity and honor of pages 
designed here to be represented should perversion of conditions 
or ambiguity be indulged. The inscriber, from the beginning of 
a literary career which now numbers six books, this being the 
seventh, has found accompanying the work a sense of strange 
association with an author who passed along in the year i8 — . 
This association has made its way into every volume; it will 
surely be found abundantly in this. It makes itself felt as a nature 
trying to drive out and take possession of the place of another 
nature. It is succeeding, and it is hoped will succeed until a new 
and superior life has taken the place of an old one. 

The name of this author was written upon the face of paper 
concealed closely by an overhanging hand. The eye of the 
medium could not by any possibility have seen what was being 
put down, but instantaneously, synchronously, the man's hand, 
which had in it a pencil, flew with lightning rapidity over a page, 
repeating, but in reversed condition, the name inscribed. The 
table gave forth sound of powerful knocks throughout its whole 
circumference. 

It was a first experience, and it was peculiarly in consonance 
with a state of mind. It seemed undoubtable relation with a 
double. Every fibre and impulse responded. 

The medium himself was, or assumed to be, astonished. " Ask," 
he said, " ask anything. Get proof, get absolute proof, of spiritual 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 125 

relations while opportunity is by. Ask anything ; there is, I am 
sure, nothing that can be inquired which will not be answered." 
If the excitement of the man was assumed, he is to be credited 
with being a fine actor. 

" There is an experience," it was replied, " known to no hu- 
man being but the speaker. It is an incident which has proved 
a perplexity to all investigations. It has an added strangeness in 
that one event connecting others of three weeks' duration is to 
be comprised in a single word. Let this double, which you say 
is now in you, write this word, and not to believe seems impos- 
sible." 

There was not a second of hesitation. The pen preceded, if 
possible, the thought ; the word appeared on the face of a sheet 
lying before the medium. 

The inditer is writing of the occasion as it was. The sudden 
appearance of the word exhilarated, intensified, overwhelmed him 
out of all ordinary worldly caution and prudence. He jumped 
from the chair and rushed into the next room, telling the wonder- 
ful thing to strangers, who listened with open eyes and ears, even 
if not all of them with entire credulity. 

This, as remarked, was a first experience. To it is desired to 
have added and to have understood something before proceeding. 
The world is full of books, yet are nearly all players, after some 
fashion or other, at masquerade. Honesty, as to inwardness, is 
an exception. Writers do not open themselves, but keep a but- 
toned coat, so that what is beneath is not to be seen. If a man 
be impressionable, let him not conceal the virtue, for it is indeed 
of a virtue that an impressionable man is possessed ; neither is 
such a one to overlook that here lies definition of genius, and that 
with gifts rests responsibility. It is the impressionable man alone 
who is capable of seeing, hearing, and feeling things not recog- 
nizable by the masses. Music is through musicians, poetry is 
through poets, the spiritual is through the spiritual. There is a 
second matter, here personal, but not needing apology. The in- 
scriber of the present pages is now comparatively advanced in 
years, his ambitions are all outgrown, his estimates of men and 
judgments long ago made out ; prospective has centered in present 
II* 



126 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

and introspective. For thirty years a teacher, his own life, life- 
thoughts, and life-works mixed up with the lives, life-thoughts, 
and life-works of lonianism, Sophists, Platonists, Aristotelians, 
Stoics, Mystics, Scholastics, and Moderns ; discussing with young 
men questions philosophical and metaphysical, and considering 
with the old that most important of all things, — " ground of Certi- 
tude," — he has come to esteem that he would like to place on 
paper something which, after a manner, shall be autobiographic of 
these experiences, relations, and work, and it is in such spirit that 
the pages here indited are penned. They are meant as a legacy 
to many well-remembered students ; are to be an old friend trans- 
ported into new quarters ; are to keep in mind the class-room, 
and to tell of things happening and that have happened since the 
separation. Best of all, perhaps, the friend here found is in the 
fashion of a book which will keep quiet, or repeat the old, or in- 
vite to new experiences, as may be found most agreeable. 

To come back to the experiences : great excitement is no help 
to clear thinking. The night of the return from the interview 
with the medium was spent in a state of restlessness that entirely 
banished sleep. Convincing proof seemed to have been afforded 
of relation M'ith a dematerialized personality. Was it possible to 
deny the singular and peculiarly special proof afforded ? Next day 
at noon a private visit was made to the medium. The result of the 
interview was an increase of the mysterious. Scarcely a word 
had been spoken, the ordinary salutation of "good-morning" 
not unlikely, when the medium lifted from the table a clean slate, 
and, holding this for a single moment beneath the table, handed 
it to his visitor covered with writing, to which was affixed the 
signature in full of a close relative whose body had been buried 
in a village graveyard of a neighboring State thirty years before. 
This accomplished, the slate filled and refilled itself with mes- 
sages from the source of the preceding evening ; some of these 
being replies to queries, others of common and unimportant sig- 
nification. 

The writer is here to remark a strong impression made by the 
medium as to honesty and religiousness of nature and purpose, and 
this seemed warranted in an interview occur 'ing two days later, 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 



127 



where writing was done on the slate to the effect that the manner 
of relation being employed was of crude import quite unworthy 
of an intercourse capable of being enjoyed, and that hereafter 
the instrument need not be employed as a go-between. It requires 
to be added that at each visit compensation for the time of the 
medium had been made by placing a fee upon his table. 

The present experiences are entitled "Transcendental 
Physics" for the reason that they deal with acts accomplished 
after occult manner. An exception to such physical signification 
is just here to be recorded, and with it ends relation with the 
present medium. He had " made up his mind," the man said, 
*' to study medicine, and, being of very limited means, would like 
to offer in exchange for advantages he trusted to gain by atten- 
dance on certain of the writer's clinical lectures whatever of 
profit might lie with looking into the subject of his gift in the 
direction of mediumship. 

" Treating you as an honorable man," it was replied, " who 
introduces a subject, which, after the aspect in which it is pre- 
sented, is new and impressive, it is to be asked if you yourself are 
unconscious as far as explanation of this writing is concerned ?" 

" Entirely so," he replied. 

A bargain of mutual service was agreed on, and that same 
evening found the bargainers closeted in the museum of a hos- 
pital, where the surgical studies were to be pursued. Six meet- 
ings were held, to each of which the writer brought his own slate, 
the medium being allowed to lift and to put it under the table and in 
drawers or wheresoever it pleased him, but the six meetings passed 
without so much as a line or a letter appearing. There was re- 
turn of the primary phase, however. The man would write quickly 
upon a sheet answers to queries, concerning things of which it 
seemed quite impossible he could have knowledge. It was asked, 
to afford a few examples : " In what year did W. depart?" The 
answer written was correct, the name of the month being added. 
" Whereabouts in Europe is E. now living ?" The answer, 
" Paris," was right. " What is the name of a friend now in mind, 
and where was his last place of residence ?" The reply, equally 
correct with the preceding, was, " Mr. S., Wilmington, Delaware." 



128 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Familiarity v/ith, or even the single repetition of, an experience 
diminishes vividness as to impression made. On this occas-ion 
the doctorly characteristic of accepting or rejecting nothing with- 
out investigation strongly reasserted itself. What the doctor did 
was to light what he calls his " Familiar," a meerschaum kept for 
duty in the dissecting-room, and to cogitate over the matter as 
the smoke rolled in rings toward the ceiling. " This double," it 
was finally said, " was nursed in his last sickness by the barkeeper 
of a certain hostelry in a certain far-off town. Will he name 
the house and the man?" There was no response. The name 
of the house had gone temporarily from the questioner's memory ; 
that of the barkeeper he had never known. The medium sat op- 
posite ; his head rested upon his hand ; his eyes turned hither and 
thither as if expecting to get sight of something. Quite an hour 
passed, during which infrequent knocks were heard, but no at- 
tempt made to answer the questions. Suddenly, after this lapse 
of time, the name of the house came back to the questioner's 
mind. Almost instantly the medium commenced to spell " M-i-d- 
d-1-e-s-e-x." It was the word. " Try now the name of the 
nurse," it was asked. The medium gazed intently into the eyes 
of the speaker, but his tongue found nothing to tell. 

There was here in the difference a revelation, but a revelation 
solely out of the observer's consciousness. The medium had 
never as yet told anything but what was already known. It was 
the manner of telling which had startled and confounded. Rela- 
tion was of a character not beyond explanation by physiology. 
Suspicion instantly made a thrust at credulity. 

" It is even as seen and has been told," said the medium, rising 
and taking up his hat. «* What you are to know is to be through 
yourself. We have no occasion to meet any more." And we did 
not meet any more. 

. . . Credulity was thrust out, not killed ; not even particularly 
disabled. It was not writing upon a slate that was an over- 
whelming wonder. But where, or what, was the art, science, 
sense, or thing of occult signification which seemed to know all 
about unspoken secrets ? 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 129 

Passage is here made to the mediumship of the gentlen an and 
student, member and worker of and with the Seybert commission, 
whose initial introduces the pages ; and as now direct part comes 
to be taken by the writer, the personal pronoun will be employed. 

" We will unravel or lose ourselves in these mysteries," I said. 
The conversation introducing this remark followed the experience 
recorded ; as many as three years, however, having elapsed. 

** I will entreat the spirits," he answered, " in the line of tran- 
scendental physics." 

"And I," was my reply, "will court and invite the psychic." 
I might readily promise this last, as at the time I was knowing to 
and had myself become a seer of — of what ? 

It was fully a year after the compact, — a year which had seemed 
to change my friend into an alchemist, and which certainly had 
grown a feature of concern into his open countenance, otherwise 
such a feature was assumed, — when a note was received asking a 
meeting at his house with several gentlemen, who, like ourselves, 
were interested in occult investigations. 

It was not entertainment for idle hours that brought this com- 
pany together. All had become familiar with mysterious mani- 
festations. All were knowing to claims made in high and in low 
places concerning the new faith. Bible and tradition were become 
obsolete with many. Certainty was inferred to have taken the 
place of hypothetical and fallacious. Eyes now saw for them- 
selves. Ears now heard for themselves. Touch now touched 
and measured for itself. Revelation had descended to association 
with common sense. To deny or to doubt the new faith was to 
doubt that one had seen, heard, and felt what only to-day or 
yesterday had been seen, heard, or felt. 

The time of a first meeting was the night of March 13, 18 — ; 
the place, a house situated on a prominent street in the heart of the 
great city of Philadelphia ; the room, not hid, as in the days of 
alembics, in a garret or cellar, but being a great oblong square, 
brilliantly lit by a modern chandelier. Everything bore the stamp 
of beauty and freshness, the host alone excepted ; he carried him- 
self as one wearied and distrait and anxious for an occasion to 
be t^. 



I^o SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

What occurred at this meeting was written out two days later 
by urgent request of the confrire, an urgency not at all compre- 
hended at the time, but which later showed agreement with the 
Aristotelian aphorism that " common sense is little better than no 
sense at all," — an aphorism brought quickly enough to the under- 
standing of students of occult matters. 

Inviting his audience to seats at one end of the room, the ccn- 
frire placed a chair at the other end, in which chair the writer 
was invited to be seated. Now were handed him a slip of paper, 
a lead-pencil, and a book, the last to serve as a support while 
using the knee as a stand. Upon the paper a question was to 
be written. The confrere retired to the other end of the room to 
afford opportunity for the writing to be done without possible 
oversight by him. Advantage was taken of this absence to note 
upon the paper the question " What is evolution?" The paper 
was instantly folded, the writing being within. The writer was 
directed to enclose the slip in four envelopes of increased sizes. 
Into the first \f as placed the question, and the envelope sealed. 
This was put into a second, the second into a third, the third into 
the last. On each were written the initials of the writer. The 
whole was then placed into the inside breast-pocket of a coat 
worn by the writer, and this was closely buttoned and kept so 
during the whole evening. Dr. W. did not touch the paper after 
the writer had taken it into his hand. A second question was 
written at the same time and under exactly similar circumstances 
by another of the persons present, a like disposition being made 
of it. 

There was now handed to the writer by the confrere a hinged 
slate, with the request that examination be made with a view to 
seeing whether it be other than it seemed. Such examination 
was made by three or four of the gentlemen present, no discovery 
following. This being settled, the writer was furnished with a 
screw and screw-driver, by means of which the slates were re- 
lated and a sticker placed over the screw-head. The slates were 
next enclosed in a sealed envelope by the writer, and kept care- 
fully under direct observation, — that is, they lay upon the holder's 
lap, immediately beneath his eyes, and with sixteen other pairs of 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. i^j 

eyes bent all the time upon the enclosure. The light of three 
gas-jets illuminated the proceedings. 

Now were handed the gentleman referred to, and also to the 
writer, second slips of paper, with request for repetition of the 
questions. Such repetition being written by each, Dr. W. put 
into their hands common cylindrical wooden boxes of not greater 
diameter than an ordinary lead-pencil, entrance to which was by 
means of a lid connecting itself with the body cork fashion, into 
which boxes, after closest examination as to false bottom, sides, 
etc., the papers were placed by the writers, the tops of the cylin- 
ders being put into place, and the boxes as to circumference, in- 
cluding the relation of the lid with the body, enclosed and fastened 
by mucilage-covered paper. The boxes were of plain wood, 
such as hold the cheaper kind of hair-pins. 

Next there was handed to the writer an empty box, made of 
mahogany. Close scrutiny showed nothing different from an 
ordinary case of its general kind. The lid was related to the 
body by common brass hinges ; there was a lock and there was a 
ringed handle for convenience in carrying. In this box the 
wooden tubes containing their enclosures, which, up to this mo- 
ment, had not left the writer's hands, were placed and the lid 
closed. Next a key was furnished the writer, who, after locking 
the box, placed the key in his pocket. Succeeding this seals were 
used by the writer, the keyhole being covered and the body and 
lid conjoined by gum stickers. Upon the seal covering the key- 
hole the initials of the sealer were peculiarly written. 

At this stage a third box, made of common pasteboard, was 
brought to the table, and into it was dropped the mahogany box 
just spoken of, an immediately succeeding performance being the 
enveloping in paper of this wooden box, together with a careful 
cording of it with twine. 

Now was brought still another box, this of paper. Into it was 
placed the nest, made by the three boxes just described, together 
with four handkerchiefs furnished from the pockets of gentlemen 
standing around. This box was also wrapped and tied up in 
paper. Succeeding, an empty wooden box was brought to the 
table, which, after being examined, was locked, sealed, and wrapped 



132 SPIRirUS SANCTUS. 

securely, the key being given into the care of the writer. The 
slate, untouched, remained in the hands and under constant ob- 
servation. 

At the confrere's request the gas was now turned off, the room 
being in darkness. A gentleman present commenced to play upon 
a parlor organ standing in the room. Soon was observed an in- 
distinctly-defined phosphorescent hand, which passed slowly about 
the apartment on either side of the room and from one end to the 
other, and at various heights between the floor and the ceiling. 
Not a sound save of the music was heard. The confrere, standing 
at one end of the room, asked if spirits were present prepared to do 
his bidding. In answer there were three raps, seemingly upon a 
table in the centre of the room. " Will the spirits write answers 
upon the slate ?" Three raps in reply. After a pause of a few 
moments : " Is the writing done?" Three raps, signifying yes. 

" Lights," said the confrere. The jets were lighted. " Expose 
the slates." First the envelope was torn off, the sticker over the 
screw being found undisturbed. The screw-driver was now 
brought into requisition, and the slates, being exposed, were found 
covered with writing, — upon the one side answer to one query, 
upon the other side answer to the other. These answers were 
direct and explicit replies to the questions asked. 

The writer has to interpolate that during the dark portions of 
the seance the slates were tightly held in his hand. 

On opening the pasteboard box containing the rest of the boxes, 
heretofore described, and the handkerchiefs, these were found 
missing, while in their place was an accordion ; and in the wooden 
box, which was locked and corded empty, were found the nest 
of boxes and the handkerchiefs. The seals and marking were 
critically scrutinized before being broken. There were found, 
besides the original two cylinders containing the questions, two 
others of similar character. The two holding the questions were 
seen to be sealed precisely as originally placed. In the comple- 
mental two were found equally direct answers to the questions as 
were those written upon the slates, but of different wording. 

On subsidence of the overwhelming surprise, the confrere seated 
himself upon a chair. The lights having been turned off for a 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 133 

moment, he was found intricately knotted up in a rope tied at the 
ankles and below and above the knees. The wrists were also 
tied, and in turn bound down to the knees. Offer of a large sum 
was made to any one who in fifteen minutes would untie the 
knots without the use of a marline-spike. The lights having been 
again extinguished, but for a single moment, a heavy iron, ring 
was found to have been placed on each arm above the cords 
which bound the wrists together. These rings were then slipped 
along the confrere's arms and carried up to his body by a gentle- 
man present, who next took up a chain, passing which through 
the rings, the two were made almost to meet by the drawing back 
of the shoulder-blades, the chain being locked while the apparatus 
was in such position. The lights were now again turned off; the 
rings, together with the still locked chain, were in a moment 
thrown upon the floor. 

The accordion which had so mysteriously found its way into 
the locked and roped box was now corded securely by one of the 
guests, with a multitude of turnings and knots, and placed upon a 
table, together with a mouth-organ and a number of different-sized 
bells, the table being close alongside the host. The lights were 
again turned off, and music from the two instruments sounded freely, 
while the various-toned bells were rung singly and then simulta- 
neously. Reillumination of the room discovered the confrere to 
be tied up as before ; yet what impressed those present most was 
that the accordion remained certainly undisturbed as to a single 
turn or knot. In response to the common suggestion that imita- 
tion of the accordion had been secured from the harmonica. Dr. 
W. assured his guests that what had been heard was music from 
the accordion itself, — the particular one at that moment before 
them upon the table, still so tied that no one else could draw a 
sound from it. The light being now put out, and the organ music 
brought into requisition, a moment or two sufficed to show the 
magician not only free, — the rope lying untied and unknotted upon 
the floor, — but the wonder-worker standing composedly at the other 
end of the room. 

A succeeding accomplishment was the tying of knots in an end- 
less rope. This is the performance in which originated Professor 
12 



134 SPIRITUS SANC2US. 

Zollner's book on the fourtli dimension of space, and which had 
perhaps the greatest of all influences in converting a number of 
German savans to spiritualism. 

A wonderful part of this performance, so far as Dr. W. is con- 
cerned, lies in the fact that he had never heard of these knots 
until his attention was called to the matter by the writer on this 
special occasion. 

" You know of the Zollner knots?" queried the writer. 

"No," said the confrere; "never heard of them. What are 
they like?" 

It was explained that when Mr. Slade, the professed medium, 
visited Professor Zollner at Leipsic, a common rope was taken, 
the free ends of which were attached by means of seals, thus con- 
verting the line into a circle. The portion of this circle held by 
the seals was laid upon a table and kept covered by the hand of 
Zollner, the loop being allowed to fall to the floor. At the oppo- 
site side of the table sat Mr. Slade. It is written in the Leipsic 
professor's book, "Transcendental Physics," that in broad day- 
light, Slade's hands remaining upon the table and being covered 
by the free hand of Zollner, four knots were tied in his endless 
rope. 

On the conclusion of the explanation — the writer, in the mean 
time, having knotted the free ends of a rope held at the moment 
in his hands — a circle thus prepared was thrown towards Dr. W., 
with a request, laughingly made, that his spirit try a feat impos- 
sible to earthly physics. Taking up this circle and turning him- 
self so as to conceal the manipulations, the confrere gave the 
writer the profoundest surprise of his life by throwing the circle 
part of the rop^e back in less than half a minute with two complete 
knots tied in it. 

Dr. W. then produced a rope of some twenty feet in length. 
This cord, having been examined inch by inch, was taken by the 
writer and converted into a circle by attachment of the free ex- 
tremities to either hand, twisting these about his different fingers 
so as to insure undoubtable fixation. The lights having been 
turned out for the space of about a minute, the circle of this cord 
was found with fifteen knots upon it. Close examination, made 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. ,,- 

under much light, by twisting, pulling, and biting, discovered 
nothing different from any common rope. 

Still another mystery shown by Dr. W. consisted in taking two 
lengths of common tape, over which a napkin-ring was slipped. 
When this was pushed to the middle, it was tied by a common 
knot made of the tapes. In apposition with this fixed ring two 
others were placed, these latter being slipped upon the tapes from 
either end and the knotting repeated. Next a coat was supported 
upon the tapes, the arms being threaded by them. The ends of 
these tapes being held at opposite sides of the room by gentlemen 
of the audience, the operator quickly removed the rings and 
handed them to the spectators. A moment more sufficed to show 
the coat alike cleared, the ends of the tapes being still held and 
their continuity remaining unbroken. 

Another demonstration. He took a piece of rope and tied two 
knots in it, so as to leave free ends of about two feet in length 
and a loop sufficiently large to be passed over the head, the rem- 
nant of the rope being a circle resting upon the floor. The loop 
was passed over the head and about the neck of the writer and 
the free ends given into his grasp. Next was laid upon his lap a 
common cast-iron lathe-wheel weighing about twelve pounds. 
The light being put out for a moment, this wheel was found strung 
upon the circle of the rope. 

In still another demonstration fourteen rings were employed, 
no two alike. These were of cast and wrought iron, of cast and 
wrought brass, of rope, of wood, of leather, of tin, of pasteboard, 
etc., and one was the rim of an old silk hat. These rings were of 
varying sizes and of different weights, — from six to twelve inches 
in diameter and from a couple of ounces to a couple of pounds 
each. These various rings were placed by Dr. W. upon the right 
arm of the writer, reaching from shoulder to wrist. Next the 
operator's left hand was grasped in the full light by the left hand 
of the writer. 

The doctor at this point asked that special attention be given to 
the anatomical relations of the grasped hands, in order that any 
attempt on his part to effect a solution of continuity between them 
might the more readily be detected. Due attention was given the 



1^6 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

hint, and two hands, as it seemed to the writer, were never more 
carefully and intimately united by muscular grasp. The light 
being now put out, considerable commotion ensued among the 
rings, and they appeared to slip down the left arm of the confrere 
and to be pushed up the left arm of the writer. 

The gas being relighted, all the rings were found upon the 
writer's left arm, note of the fact being added as to positive con- 
viction that no change had occurred in the grip of the hands. 

In order to meet the explanation of possible substitution. Dr. 
W. gave into the hands of the writer a heavy polished and nickel- 
plated iron ring, with request that a ribbon be tied to it, and that 
a piece of the end of the ribbon be cut off and preserved for 
matching at the close of the experiment. The ring being held in 
the left hand of the writer, his left hand and that of the confrere 
were firmly joined and the light again extinguished. In an in- 
stant the ring was snatched out of the writer's hand, lights called 
for, and at the same moment the ring was, with apparent force, 
hung on the right arm, the hand of which still grasped that of 
Dr. W. Subsequent comparison of the piece of ribbon given 
into the writer's possession with the end of that still tied to the 
ring showed the two portions as relating exactly. 

Dr. W. next allowed his feet and hands to be securely tied 
each to a separate chair, he sitting in one chair with his arms ex- 
tended in opposite directions, the hands grasping each the arm of 
another chair, his feet resting each on an additional chair. The 
hands and feet were then securely tied each to a separate chair. 
There were laid on the floor beside him four large brass rings. 
The light being again extinguished, a few moments sufficed to 
show a ring on each arm and leg, above each cord and knot. A 
careful examination of the bindings by the four gentlemen who 
had, each after his own method, tied the knots failed to show that 
the rope had been interfered with. Again the lights were turned 
off, and in less time than it takes to note the occurrence the rings 
were thrown violently to the floor, light called for, and the con- 
frire found as tightly corded as ever. . . . Another moment of 
darkness and he stood upon the floor free of his bonds. 

Some wonderful exhibitions were given, in which was answered 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 137 

promptly writing done on folded slips of paper held against th^ 
medium's forehead. One singular exception to the correct 
reading of these slips was when Dr. W. gave the name of a gentle- 
man, when in the paper his name had been suggested only in- 
directly by mention of a journal which he edits. 

Various other demonstrations entirely incomprehensible were 
given, the company being at complete loss to account for the man- 
ifestations. Several highly-intelligent gentlemen, including a well- 
known doctor of divinity who was present, spoke subsequently 
of their profound bewilderment over the strange experiences of 
the night, accepting that clearest evidence seemed afforded of 
the agency of occult force. 

As a conclusion to the evening's seance, two common slates 
were marked, and a question having been written upon a piece of 
paper, which paper was laid between them, the slates were wrapped 
together and enveloped. This envelope was next carefully tied 
in position with twine. Five masses of sealing-wax were next 
used as further security for fixation of the envelope and twine, 
and these masses were impressed with a special mark, to make 
which required a seal in the possession of the writer. These en- 
veloped and sealed slates were placed in a closet familiar to the 
writer for years, — a simple closet with shelves holding medicine- 
bottles, — the door of which was locked. Later the door was un- 
locked, and the enveloped slates were taken out. The seals were 
first minutely examined by means of a magnifying-glass, and no 
disturbance whatever could be detected. The envelope being 
removed and the slates exposed, one of them was found full of 
writing in answer to its enclosed question. It is to be added that 
a piece of pencil, about an inch in length, which had been placed 
between the slates was found broken into small fragments. 

A repetition of this experiment was made, in which the writer 
was assisted by several of those present. Ingenuity was exhausted 
in trying to so complicate the wrapping and sealing that no human 
skill should suffice to overcome the obstacles intended to prevent, 
access to the slates. But, as before, although every fold of the 
enclosing paper, eveiy turn and knot of the encircling cords, and 
every seal were found intact, so far as a most careful and thorough 

\2* 



1 38 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

examination could determine, the slate, when exposed, was found 
to have been written upon, and explicit reply was received to the 
question which had been asked. 

The development of the confrere has advanced to a point where 
manifestations constitute a series of overwhelming surprises. 
From what I have been seeing and continue to see of the power 
exhibited through this man, I can have no hesitation in expressing 
a positive promise to any one requiring for his conversion to the 
new faith such occult exhibitions, that a common stone may be 
picked from the street, placed in the open light of mid-day, upon 
the marble surface of a table, the eyes being never removed from 
it, no covering of any kind being used; that this stone after a few 
moments may be lifted, a conversion, as would be verified by 
every sense, into pure gold ; or, with as little doubt as to success, 
I may assume that putty will be found changed into bread, or a 
splinter of wood into a stick of steel. 

Here are recorded, in words written at the time, the progress 
and manifestations of a seance. 

" I am seated in the library of my confrere. The date is March 
II, i8 — , a year later than the record just made. The time is 
nine o'clock in the evening. The company assembled numbers 
nine persons. The room is brilliantly lighted. 

" Dr. reaches me a simple bag containing a score of common 

visiting cards, the character of bag and cards testifying to the 
senses in examination. The cards have questions written across 
their face. I am requested to select or to take any one of these 
cards from the bag, and, after reading the question privately, drop 
it back. One, lifted at random, read, ♦ What is anthropology ?' 

Dr. now turned to the common centre-table of the apartment, 

and, taking up a double slate which lay upon it, handed it around 
for examination. To assure myself that there is no chemical or 
concealed writing, I examine with every care the four faces of the 
slate. I chalk and re-chalk these thoroughly, and sponge, rub, 
and re-sponge them. Next I screw the frame together, not having 
allowed the slate in the mean time to go out of my hands, and, 
this done, I hold it uncovered in the air. 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 13^ 

** After perhaps two minutes the confrere asks if the spirits have 
written. Response is in the form of a double knock made appar- 
ently upon a distant table, these two knocks signifying * No.' 
After another minute three knocks are heard, implying ' Yes.' 
Placing the slate now upon my lap and removing the screw, the 
two approximal faces are found covered with lines, written evi- 
dently with a common slate-pencil ; these lines affording answer, 
after a learned manner, to the question so secretly scanned by my- 
self This answer is in shape of a double reply, with marked dif- 
ferences as to construction of the definitions. The communication 
found on one leaf is signed Noah Webster. The other purports 
to be written by Ben Jonson. 

" The sponge which has been used to test the slates is now 
lifted from the table and again applied, when the writing rubs 
off as do any slate-pencil marks." 

The Zollner Knot under Original Test. — A reconsideration of 
the matter and a careful re-reading of Professor ZoUner's book 
combined to arouse a doubt as to the absolute oneness of the 
manifestations of knot-tying, as I had seen it, with that which had 
impressed to the extent of converting to the new faith the eminent 
and learned German and his no less eminent and learned friends. 
I spoke this doubt to the confrere. Like other mediums, he is 
emotional. " Occult," he answered, " is to be accepted as of such 
different signification from Open that tests or conditions should 
make no difference as to accomplishment. We will see what 
we shall see!" 

It is now to be mentioned as something that would seem to 
have strangeness related with it, that attempts at knot-tying under 
all kinds of odd conditions seemed from the date of this conver- 
sation to get mixed up with all our meetings, this continuing 
quite a year, undoubted attempts being made on two separate 
occasions to repeat in America the wonderful things seen in 
Europe. 

It was on the date of May ii, in the year succeeding the second 
described of our seances, when a hasty note from the confrere bid 
me to a gathering of spirits who had promised that the meeting 
should be attended with the manifestations of the Zollner knot 



I40 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

at the hands of an equally powerful force with that one which had 
accomplished it in Germany. The promise went further. It im- 
plied that any heretofore unthought-of test might be demanded. 
Nothing in the way of transcendental physics, it was implied, was 
impossible to the spirit that was to manifest. The mortals were 
not to hesitate at asking any seemingly impossible thing. The 
occasion was to be one that should settle the great question as to 
the existence of a fourth dimension of space ; solid should pass 
through solid unmistakably and unquestionably. 

I here turn to a note-book and copy as closely as possible the 
seance as it occurred, having at the time of writing been extra- 
ordinarily careful not to allow the slightest incident to escape 
observation. 

" The room is brilliantly lighted. The confrere and myself are 
seated either side of a marble topped table directly beneath the 
chandelier. Upon the table lies a simple length of worsted cord, 
measuring six feet; beside this, an ordinaiy visiting-card, having 
two holes punched in it, a stick of sealing-wax, a threaded needle, 
and a lighted wax candle, supported in its stand. 

*'I take up the cord and examine it thoroughly to satisfy myself 
that there is no deception as to integrity of continuousness. I 
am unwilling to trust to anything but my own senses ; I must see 
and feel to be satisfied. I pull this cord, twist, untwist, and work 
at it in every way. I make myself sure that it is nothing different 
from what it shows, namely, ordinary cord as it is found for sale 
in the shops. 

" I now take up the card and pass the free ends of the cord 
through the perforations, crossing these ends and passing them in 
turn back through opposite holes. A succeeding step employs 
the thread and needle, the common length of the cord and the 
two ends being firmly sewed together. This accomplished, wax 
and candle are brought into requisition, the wax being melted 
upon the crossed and sewed cord, as this relates with the card, 
thus making the two articles practically one, and insuring a circle 
of cord not possible to be broken without discovery. 

" Preparation thus made in correspondence with the test re- 
ceived by Professor Zollner, I lay the card, holding the cord,. 



TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS. 141 

upon the illuminated table, placing my hand so as to cover it on 
one side to about one-fourth of its width, while the medium 
covers it on the opposite side after a similar fashion ; this laying 
on of hands being with a view, as expressed by the confrere, to 
furnish reserve force, to be drawn on, if necessary, by the spirits. 
The loop of the cord is thrown over one side of the table and 
lies upon the floor. 

" The requirements are perfect as to the minutest detail ; nothing 
is omitted. Shall we witness this greatest of all possible tests ? 
We sit silently facing each other. No word is spoken. Suddenly 
raps are heard as if coming from the floor ; one, two, three ; this 
is the usual signal for accomplishment. Quickly the loop is lifted. 
It holds five hard-tied knots. 

" What shall we say ? What is to be said ? As truly as I saw 
so truly do I describe what I saw. May a man do aught but 
accept a faith attested by such a miracle ? Shall one wonder at 
what was begotten with the learned German savans ?" 

Were unlimited pages at command, multitudinous wonderful 
experiences had with the confrere might be recited ; two, associated 
with slate- writing, m.ust conclude the limitation. 

Five persons sat in the usual room of meeting, among these 
being the medium. A sudden impulse coming to me, I pick 
up a common, single, perfectly-clean slate and hold it above my 
head asking for a communication, in which request I am earnestly 
seconded by the confrere. A minute later I look at the slate, 
finding it covered with writing, the following being a copy of 
what appeared : 

" My dear Professor, — The roads leading to error and truth 
run closely and continuously side by side. Let this message, con- 
veyed to you in mid-air, convince that there is power, as yet un- 
recognized by mortals, that is able to do things entirely beyond 
the ability of men." 

The communication was signed with a very familiar name. 

Another of the company, overwhelmed at so inexpressible a 
phenomenon, takes the slate, washes it, and, holding it up, asks 
favor at the hand of the spirit. As in the case recited, a single 
minute sufficed for a communication. 



142 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

" Convince me ! convince me !" cried the astounded guest, 
after reading the matter, " that there is no deception by erasing 
what has been written." The slate was again held up, and in a 
moment drawn back ; there was neither sign nor mark upon it. 

There are door-steps leading to the Spiritus Sanctus ; this is the 
me that rests upon the ground. 



IX. 

PSYCHICS. 



Here attention is directed to the matter of visions. A letter 
from a lady, written with view to professional advice, notes as 
follows : " Yesterday morning, starting at the foot of the stairs 
with the intention of going to the third floor, I saw with all the 
distinctness of life a person standing at the landing above looking 
down at me. As I advanced the figure disappeared," The lady 
tells of another occasion where, on entering a room, a woman 
was seen lying apparently asleep on a lounge, and who vanished 
only on being approached within a few feet. Other equally 
striking incidents are related. 

A very short time back a gentleman entered the office of the 
writer who pronounced himself a convert to spiritism on the 
ground that with his own eyes he was the frequent beholder of a 
spirit-form, which he had come to recognize as a Familiar in con- 
stant attendance on him. An irrefutable proof to the mind of the 
observer lay in the fact that no hallucination as to dreaming could 
exist, seeing that the spirit never made its visits at night, but, as 
in verification of its reality, would rise into presence and disap- 
pear in the bright light of mid-day, and never at any other time. 

" The spirit comes quickly into view and disappears slowly ?" 
was asked him. 
" Yes." 



PSYCHICS. 



143 



"And it proves its reality by standing between you and the 
sun ?" 

" This is always its position." 

" What shape does it take?" 

** In a very bright sunlight I see simply the trunk of a human 
being. When the light is not so bright there is a gradual shading 
off as if the extremities were trying to show themselves." 

" Facial features indistinct ?" was suggested. 

" Come to think of it," he observed, " have never particularly 
noticed." 

" You see this phantom when walking the busy street of the 
city as when in the solitude of a country lane ?" 

" I cannot doubt," the man replied, " that the form is that of a 
spirit which is ever near me, even though not always seen." 

" Consciousness of such association with the dematerialized 
keeps you filled with a sense of delight and safety ?" 

" It is to me," he replied, " irrefutable proof of the existence 
of life after dissolution of the body. I have no longer any doubt, 
for faith has been turned into reality. I have been blessed to find 
the something compared with which everything else falls into in- 
significance." 

Yesterday, February 20, 18 — , a professional interview was had 
with a young woman who beholds the air filled with black stream- 
ers, while a mind was brought which was full of blacker forebodings. 
" Pestilence was in the air. A little while and every door would 
show crape. Forsooth, the end of the world was at hand." She 
was sure something terrible was about to happen. Nearly every 
bell-pull had crape attached. The exceptions were few. Crape 
was everywhere, and the brighter the day the more pronounced, 
as if in making contrast, was the blackness. A person more pessi- 
mistic and more completely overwhelmed by forebodings it would 
be hard to find. Many similar experiences with seers of spirit- 
istic phenomena have been had by the writer in his professional 
capacity. 

What is a doctor to say of things like these known to be seen, 
not only of hearsay, but, as is now to be related, by personal ex- 
perience ? 



144 



SFIRITUS SANCTUS. 



What immediately follows is an account of occult visitations 
copied from a note-book, much of the writing having been done 
at time of occurrence of the incidents recorded. 

The reading is as given. 

" Shortly after laying my head upon the pillow last night (no 
dat*) sensation of touches close by the ear were experienced, as 
though a mouse might be jumping about, these touches on several 
occasions reaching the face and producing impressions which 
brought the hand quickly into requisition with a view of brushing 
away the intruder. Later, face after face, mostly those of young 
children, gathered about the bed ; these would appear as if emerg- 
ing quickly out of an impenetrable blackness immediately back 
of them, and with gentle but rapid motion approach more or less 
closely. At times a face would vanish as if dissolved, not unlike 
the disappearance of a soap-bubble ; at other times I looked in- 
tently into some one countenance, seeking familiar features. Ap- 
pearance and disappearance impressed me as varying from a 
moment to a minute. Several of the faces approached with such 
rapidity that my hands involuntarily went up to guard against 
collision. 

" 1 8 — . Another manifestation" (copied, like the preceding, 
from diary). " I was lying in bed; the room was dark and cold, 
a window being open, after my usual manner of sleeping. It is 
not at all unlikely I had fallen into that kind of light sleep 
known familiarly as * cat-nap.' Suddenly I was startled into 
vivid wakefulness by a sense of the presence of somebody in the 
chamber. Casting a glance towards a dressing-bureau, I saw 
plainly two people standing by the side of it. At an adjacent 
window, leaning against the jamb, was the person of a stalwart 
Indian. Above my head, floating slowly and gracefully away, 
was a black-clothed female figure. One by one these different 
forms gradually disappeared after the manner of dissolving views ; 
not, however, until opportunity had been allowed for plenty of 
time in which to satisfy myself that I was fully awake. I am pro- 
foundly impressed as to the difference between these experiences 
and a dream." 

Here I add, parenthetically, that I continue to be influenced 



PSYCHICS. 145 

in some way by tlie floating female figure. Whatever I happen to 
have thought or to be thinking since the vision, I indulge contin- 
uously, in spite of myself, in desire and hope to meet it again. 

Night succeeding that last alluded to. " To-night I have had 
another visit from the Indian seen yesterday. The dress, the place 
occupied, and the position were all precisely the same. Disap- 
pearance was, however, almost synchronous with appearance. 

" Sunday, Jammry 13, 18 — . While sitting, this afternoon, in 
contemplative mood, being widely awake, I had my attention 
drawn to appearances which presented in the atmosphere of the 
room. The sights seen were not less diversified as to changes in 
color from what is experienced when the eyeballs are pressed, 
differing, however, even as the pictures of clouds attain sublimity 
when put in comparison with the pigmental attempts of men. 
These pictures I watched with shut eyes for quite an hour, en- 
deavoring the while to find or to obtain explanation in familiar 
optical derangements, — endeavoring, but failing to arrive at con- 
clusions. 

" January 15, 18 — . Last night, almost immediately on getting 
into bed, and while absorbed in a contemplation of the beatific 
vision of the Sunday before, I saw the form of a man suddenly pro- 
ject itself from the location of a mirror and as suddenly disap- 
pear. 

" January 16, 18 — . While lying with open eyes last night, my 
look being riveted on the mirror from which the form of the night 
before had projected itself, desire being intense for a repetition of 
the visit, the image of a person approached from an opposite direc- 
tion, but had no sooner afforded me a momentary glimpse than it 
dissolved and was lost. 

" January 27. Curious as to possibilities and probabilities, and 
being at liberty this Sunday afternoon, I avow and vouch for the 
following experience : I took a slate, and, balancing it upon the 
tips of my fingers, supporting it thus against the top of a marble 
table, I ask, with little faith, that it will spell out for me a com- 
munication, suggesting that a move in the right direction signify 
a proper letter named, and that mistakes be corrected by move- 
ment to the left. After some ten minutes spent in waiting, the 
Q. k 13 



146 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

slate exhibited evidences of motion, and, later, the following sen- 
tence was fully and fairly spelled : * "Why reason beyond a cause ?' 
Initials were given of a spirit purporting to be the writer. 

" Wednesday, January 30. I had been in bed but a very little 
while on the evening of this day, when suddenly there appeared 
and disappeared, too quickly to allow of any special description, 
the figure of one dressed in sailor garb, and who might have been 
about five feet in height. Later, — about ten minutes, perhaps, — 
I caught an indistinct glance of what seemed to be an unsuccessful 
attempt at an Indian materialization. I saw plainly a fringe of 
feathers arranged as a head-dress, while lower down appeared a 
still fainter exhibit of the edge of a blanket. No body was t© 
be seen. Synchronously, apparently, with this last, the form of a 
person flitted across the room and disappeared. A still succeeding 
phenomenon was the appearance of a plainly-dressed woman, who 
approached within two feet, and stood immovable, allowing good 
chance for a look directly into her face, after which she disap- 
peared with the quickness of a broken soap-bubble. 

" February 2. Last night, while lying in what perhaps was a 
doze, I was suddenly awakened to a state of acute consciousness 
by the instantaneous appearance of a circle of little children, 
who, with hand grasping hand, suddenly encircled me ; one, 
directly in front, was as rosy-faced and as vital in appearance as 
any mortal child to be seen, and I was permitted a long gaze 
before disappearance. Later, an indistinct and hazy adult face 
showed itself. 

" February 3. Went to bed at eleven o'clock, and lay awake 
hoping for manifestations. Was startled after about half an hour 
by seeing a hand thrust out of the darkness holding a basket 
filled with flowers. Later, a form stood at the bedside, which 
permitted me to scrutinize it closely for one or two seconds before 
disappearing. Still later, the shadows of a man and woman ap- 
peared over the foot of the bed, floating from the left to the 
right. 

" February 4. Morning, 12 A.M. One hour ago I went into the 
chamber where I meet the things being described, and, after closing 
the door, sat down with a view of seeing visions when undoubtedly 



PSYCHICS. 



147 



awake and free of any possible confusion in the way of uncon- 
scious dreaming. After being seated a few minutes, having my 
eyes fixed at a view of the white ceiling, points of light, en- 
veloped by aureolse, began making their appearance, which lights, 
after a moment of fixity, would pass, some slowly, some rapidly, 
from place to place over the wall, otherwise would fall floatingly 
in the direction of the floor. Alternating with these were vivid 
flashes and the flickerings of flame, the latter not unlike that 
made by the gas of burning coals. Later, a series of clouds, 
varying in shade from pea-green to almost black, waved over the 
ceiling ; these continuing for quite quarter of an hour. Finally 
the upper portion of human forms began to appear and disap- 
pear, these coming and going exactly as those seen at night ; a 
little later the wall showed nothing but its usual staring white 
surface. 

" February 5. Last night a dream, a fully- and fairly-appreciated 
dream, showed me the face of a female figure, so filled with life 
and animation that I awoke with the loudly-spoken cry, • See, it 
is alive!' " 

I add here what appears in my diary emphasized with a large 
interrogation mark. " The life-like face seen in the sleep is fully 
recognized as expressive of the common familiar dream ; it was 
undoubtedly a memory, a residual impression of the afternoon. 
I lay awake between the hour of this dream and the morning, 
being overwhelmed with a mental query as to the difference 
between the most vivid of dreams and the nature of what I have 
been seeing outside of dreams. What I have been seeing requires 
other explanation than that pertaining to dreams. What I have 
been seeing are materializations of — of what ? Just now I will 
not at all concern myself as to this * what' ; whether deceptions 
or realities, I will not interfere with the new sight come to me. 
These real unreal things and people mystify and delight me. Am 
I finding introduction to a world within a world, — a world where 
form needs no corporal body, and where motion exists without 
instrument ? Startling, yet delighting, the idea that the departed 
remain ; that the past is one with the present. What, I am begin- 
ning to ask myself, is provision for a life where person is atmos- 



148 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

phere, and which, if not a purely subjective existence to my own 
self as a percipient, is irrefutably a subjective existence to some- 
thing else ? To what else ? What are muscles and bones and 
brains but matter ? What is atmosphere but matter ? What is any- 
thing that eye can behold or ear hear but matter ? What is mat- 
ter? No learning, as I well know, has yet illuminated the world 
which affords the slightest idea of the meaning of matter outside 
of what is to be appreciated of it through phenomena. 

" Aristotle, as I remember, differentiates men from brutes ; un- 
wisely, however, as it must be agreed, in according reasoning 
faculties to the former which he denies the latter. Will it not 
be a happy thing to accept as brute or as simple man what has 
been seen and heard as realities, interfering not with the con- 
soling sights and sounds by cold inquiries ? 

" February 8. Last night I was awakened out of sleep, behold- 
ing my dressing-bureau draped by a white lambrequin, which 
dressing continued in place for a length of time, which enabled 
me to view it curiously and closely with eyes which a good rub- 
bing assured me were wide open. The disappearance of this 
drapery was after the manner of a dissolving view." 

Forms human and forms general exist with the immaterial 
more truly than with the material : " Image and substance are not 
essence." 

" February 9. While lying awake shortly after going to bed on 
this date, two young girls robed in red suddenly appeared standing 
by the side of the window, the exact spot being that occupied on 
his different visits by my Indian materialization. This apparition 
permitted me a reasonably satisfactory inspection, the figures 
vanishing only after I had concentrated the most earnest gaze on 
them. 

" May 5. An interval of three months, in which I have found 
myself excluded from all relations with the new-found. Yester- 
day evening saw a cat staring at me from a chair immediately 
after my getting into bed. The chair stood in front of the window. 
A little later caught a momentary glance of the robed figure of a 
woman. 

" May 6. Saw this night the tall person of a woman emerge out 



PSYCHICS. 149 

of the darkness, and disappearing after that short space of time 
which admitted of her making a bow. 

" May lo. Went to bed at nine o'clock. Awakened suddenly 
out of sleep to behold, standing near, a person of small stature, 
the color of whose skin and the general appearance indicated a 
Hindoo. 

" November 5. This long interim. To-night, after being in bed 
for perhaps an hour, unable to sleep, the seated form of a woman, 
dressed in cross-barred stuff, appeared near the bed, disappearing 
only after I had obtained a good view of it. There was nothing 
at all familiar in the face. 

^^ Friday, vtidnight, November 25. Spent the evening with 
friends in conversation on the subject of apparitions. Went to 
bed at eleven o'clock. Lay awake, thinking of matters described 
here on preceding pages. I feel reasonably certain that I had at 
no time given way to sleep. Suddenly there appeared the stoop- 
ing form of a well-grown child running from the direction of the 
foot of the bed toward the west wall of the room. The interim 
between appearance and disappearance was only sufficient to 
admit notice of the fact that the dress was a quiet cross-bar. 
Quickly succeeding, three other forms showed themselves in 
succession, each permitting, however, but a flash-like glance. 

*' Sunday night, November 27. As in the case preceding, I get 
up and light the gas, writing down the experience at the time of 
its occurrence, that mistake shall not creep in. Spent the evening 
out, the record runs, returning home a few minutes after eleven 
o'clock and going directly to bed. Awakened out of sleep to be- 
hold standing in the middle of an entrance-door the fully-dressed 
form of a young, matronly-looking woman, who held something 
between her hands, the apparition impressing me at the moment 
as representing a person caught in the act of watching, or rather 
of viewing, a sleeping person. The disappearance was precisely 
as would be witnessed in the jumping back of a watching person 
so discovered. Later on in the same night I was again aroused 
into wakefulness to perceive a man dressed in gray pantaloons 
standing directly at my bedside. Why I did not reach out with 
a view to touch this form I am at a loss to understand. Certainly, 
13* 



'SO 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 



time enough was allowed. The disappearance was with the char- 
acteristic rapidity. The quick lifting of a slide from a magic 
lantern represents it. 

*' November 27. On this night saw two bunches of grapes ; these 
I distinguished, however, as existing after the manner of a dream. 
A vision and a dream have come to be separated to my under- 
standing by a line of demarcation that is absolute. 

^^ December 13. This night I had no sooner turned off the gas 
than small lights appeared in whatever direction of the chamber 
the eyes were turned. These lights, individual at first and not 
larger singly than a pea, soon assumed motion, passing from point 
to point in the room. Occasionally two would rush impulsively 
as if intent on accomplishing a purpose, a beautiful but evan- 
escent picture being the result." 

These phenomena were watched until weariness denied further 
obsei"vation, and I turned reluctantly away. 

" December 28. This night had an experience out of which has 
grown the present book. What this experience was is to be left 
to the matter of a succeeding chapter. Suffice it here to state 
that it has had found in it the culmination of a life spent in study. 
It has discovered a long-sought ground of certitude; it has 
afforded to him who writes the summum bonum. Since this 
night (December 28, 18 — ) I have had but a single vision, and 
this related with the experience just alluded to. I have been shut 
up, as it were, with myself and with what I recognize as my 
ordinary every-day intelligence. Between the vision and what is 
the real commencement of these pages, as shortly to be under- 
stood, a full year elapsed, during which a sign lay in stillness 
without unfolding itself." 

There are door-steps leading to the Spiritus Sanctus ; here is a 
second one. 



DISILLUSIONS. 151 



DISILLUSIONS. 

What has been offered is known to almost everybody as being 
the foundation, or ground of certitude, of the spiritistic or so- 
called new faith. " I have seen, I have heard," is the assevera- 
tion. " Shall a man not believe that he sees what he sees, or 
may he doubt that he has heard what he has heard?" 

When the pessimistic lady alluded to in the preceding chapter 
had concluded her story of the black crape to be seen everywhere, 
an immediate answer consisted in dropping a trifle of a solution 
of sulphate of atropia into her eyes. Atropia placed in an eye 
enlarges the pupil of the organ to its greatest extent, thus afford- 
ing a free, open window through which, under proper illumination, 
one may see all that is on the inside quite as plainly as is beheld 
what is on the outside. 

To light up the inside of an eye the person to be examined is 
placed with the back to an Argand burner, when the operator 
catches the flame upon and reflects it in focalized form from the 
face of a mirror pertaining to an ophthalmoscope. 

The centre of the ophthalmoscopic mirror is a very small hole, 
and by applying the eye close to the back face of this an ex- 
aminer is saved the glare of the returned rays, while at the same 
time he finds himself looking into a chamber that is brilliantly 
lighted. Examination of the eyes of the person under considera- 
tion, made by use of the means described, revealed that the bulk 
of the inside, in place of being jelly-like, as is natural, had be- 
come fluid as water, while, floating in great freedom in this fluid, 
were quantities of thread-like black bodies which had originated 
out of the pigment of an inflamed layer of the tunics. It is 
quickly recognized that the streamers of crape had explanation in 
shadows cast by these threads of pigment upon the retina, and as 
well is it recognized that nineteenth-century sense (the ophthal- 
moscope is a recent invention) resolved quickly a phenomenon 
showing wholly as occult to common sense. 



152 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



The man attended so complacently and happily by a spirit 
revealed, under the same form of examination, a similar liquid 
condition of the vitreous humor. In place, however, of the pig- 
ment threads there was to be seen a floating particle of choles- 
terine in one of his eyes, having a dumb-bell form, and this of 
such likeness with the human body that a much less vivid imag- 
ination than was possessed by the gentleman would have converted 
it, as did its possessor, into an attendant spirit. 

The lady whose letter describes the apparitions seen upon the 
stair-landing and in other places is without other disease of the 
eye than what oculists call myopia, or short sight, but she is at 
this very moment of writing encased in an unyielding plaster 
jacket with a view to the cure of excessive irritability residing 
with the brain and spinal cord. 

What the writer saw are of a character of vision associated 
with vaso-constriction of the nerve-centre of equilibration, and 
the continuance of such sight admonishes a physician of danger. 
It is not to be denied that there is a wonderful attraction about 
the phenomena, and that, not unlikely, an infatuation may de- 
velop in the connection which opposes investigation. Spite of 
this, a little pathology quickly resolves ghosts into nothings j a 
multitude of ghosts, at any rate. 

Let us here delay our pace and go slowly. Is a seer of visions 
to be classed as a sick man always, or only sometimes, or how, 
or when ? 

Out of nothingness it is found possible that something may 
come. The little oval of an egg, failing everybody else as a 
support, turns into a table for Columbus. 

As a poet is apt to be deemed akin with a madman, so, after a 
manner, the seer of visions may be put in a category with sick 
men ; after a manner, truly. 

Who will follow closely in what is now written ? 

There must exist difference of condition in what the physiologist 
calls the cerebro- spinal system, a modification of equilibrium, if 
distinction hold between what is known as a genius and an 
ordinary man. By equilibrium is implied harmony. A musician, 
paradoxical as it seems to say so, is a man who is out of harmony. 



DISILLUSIONS. 



153 



A poet, while full of song, is out of harmony. So, too, an architect, 
while full of proportion, is out of harmony. Harmony implies 
that no one sense preponderates its fellows. Perception is with 
the thing that perceives. A deaf ear hears nothing at all. The 
ear of a musician is constantly ringing with sounds. Architects 
see construction when looking into vacancy. The poet is over- 
whelmed by beauty beheld where nothing is seen by an ordinary 
man. Can any one affirm that the poet makes beauty, the musician 
song, or the architect buildings? And if one cannot affirm this 
must he not necessarily accept that these things are existences in 
themselves ? being, however, essences or ideas of what have to 
find illustration in words or notes or stone in order that ordinary 
men get cognizance of them. 

Recognition is alone through means. A limpid stream which, 
to the natural eye, is crystal in its purity and cleanliness, is found 
changed, to him who uses a microscope, into an ocean filled with 
monsters, hideous and frightful to look on. All life is habitation 
to some other life. Nothing in the universe shows what it is. 
Men walking about in freedom are not conscious, as knowledge 
of the great multitude is concerned, that they live in the bottom 
of a sea forty miles in depth, and that their bodies are kept from 
falling off into space or from flying to pieces by a weight which 
presses them with a power of some fifteen pounds to every square 
inch. I am to ask myself if, being able to explain the unreality 
of one spirit, sufficiency of skill, as to perception, would not afford 
explanation of unreality in all ? Finding out, however, what I 
have about disgusting and frightful-looking fringed monsters 
which live by thousands in a glass of water, and knowing that 
in drops of vinegar a multitude of serpents are met with, I may 
wisely hesitate and not be over-ready with a reply to the query. 

Common sense is little better than no sense at all. Common 
sense, which is the sense of animals at large, shows neither 
fringed monsters nor vinegar-eels ; monsters and eels which are 
as much realities as anything in the universe is to be accepted as 
real. Forming a judgment out of analogies, I am led to see that 
science itself leads to an inference, that the apparently empty at- 
mosphere may be a world of life, separated from ordinary human 



154 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

observation simply by reason of senses not applicable, by reason 
of coarseness, or crudeness, to purposes of intercourse. Out of the 
processes of exclusion I may draw and accept an inference that 
men are associated with spiritual things which are seeable by him 
alone who is able to see. 

Out of harmony means simply out of, or apart from, common 
sense. Every musician and every poet and every architect differs 
from " common-sense" people, otherwise these would be just like 
everybody else and not that which distinguishes them from the 
others. Acuteness of sense is of nature or of education. The 
Bibles of all religions are filled with accounts of visions seen and 
voices heard. As the Christian's Bible is concerned, these ex- 
amples are too familiar to require special reference. How were 
these visions seen, or were they not visions at all, but halluci- 
nations ? 

Here we recur in few and simple words to conditions referred 
to as Objective and Subjective. 

A thing of objective signification finds illustration in a com- 
pany of beasts surrounding a man when he visits a menagerie. 
A thing of subjective signification has like illustration in a herd 
of imps or a group of angels seen by a man when he lies upon 
his bed in an attack of fever. The first is appreciated is a 
reality ; the latter is understood as unreality. These two are dis- 
tinctions made by common sense. 

Every so-called reality is but the expression, through relation 
with material, of an ideal. A body, so to speak, is an idea ma- 
terialized. Truly it is, and always has been the case, that idea of 
a thing precedes construction ; hence idea is the real thing, and 
construction is simply the representation of a thing done in what- 
ever may be the material used. Accepting this indisputable truth, 
which are we to receive as the real, the beasts of the menagerie 
or the imps and angels of a sensitized brain ? 

A system of philosophy known as Idealism places all exist- 
ences in a condition known as percipient ; that is to say, the sweet- 
ness or sourness of a particular fruit is not in the fruit itself, but 
in a tongue that tastes. Music is nowhere but in an ear that 
hears. Grandeur exists only with him who has grandeur. Beauty 



DISILLUSIONS. 155 

is not in a face looked at, but in eyes which look. This is an 
expressive, embracive, and wide-covering philosophy. Who that 
has ever visited a menagerie, and suffered from fever, but recalls 
the equal reality as to impression of surroundings associated with 
the different occasions ? John, when at the island of Patmos, saw 
a vision. The word of the Lord comes to Hosea and Habakkuk 
and to Haggai and to Zechariah. Poetry, music, and architecture 
come to poet, musician, and architect. Are not poetry, music, 
and architecture existences ? Are they not existences before find- 
ing expression, or materialization, in words, note, or stone ? Are 
words, notes, or stones anything save environments ? 

John certainly saw, and Hosea and Habakkuk and Haggai and 
Zechariah certainly received. In like manner seeing and re- 
ceiving have been going on and will continue to go on. The 
matter is as to quality and signification. Many in number are the 
poets, the singers, and the architects ; but the words and the songs 
and the structures that are of concern to others besides the indi- 
vidual are few indeed. What are we to say, on the other hand, 
of words which enlarge by the reading, of notes that intensify in 
the singing, of buildings that grow greater as looked on ? We 
may say only as to quality ; source is the same. Wine is wine 
whether found in water-jars or in grape-skins. 

Swedenborg sees visions. Jacob Behmen sees unfolded the 
inner meaning of sticks, stones, and grass. The tinker, John 
Bunyan, sees lying out before him a road leading to a holy city. 
Do I need faith to believe in these things? I know their re- 
ality in knowing of a oneness which relates objective and sub- 
jective. 

I explain these and all visions in explaining my own. A sub- 
jective sight or object is a consciousness arising out of or existing 
within one's self. Then it has nothing to do with any influence 
existing externally ? But what about music and poetry and archi- 
tecture ? I saw visions. A state of mental activity, begotten of 
much thinking about and relation with psychical matters, placed 
the brain-cells in a state of superexcitability. How my visions 
were created and seen finds illustration in fixing the gaze for one 
or two minutes on the flame of a candle burning in one end of a 



156 SPIRIT us SANCTUS, 

long room, then turning the look from the light to a darkened 
corner, when the flame is seen in a new situation. The light is 
seen where it is not by reason of this same superexcitability, only 
in the latter case the excitability is with the eye-nerve. The so- 
called spirit-lights will show themselves in number to any one 
who will risk the production of, or who happens to be laboring 
under, the condition known to doctors as a subacute or chronic 
retinitis. Astral projections are of precisely similar signification. 
The president of the American branch of the Indian Society of 
Theosophists affords me illustration in this direction. On an 
occasion, some six months back, I had spent the evening with this 
gentleman in conversation on the subject of psychical phenomena. 
We parted at midnight. At seven o'clock the next morning I 
suddenly awoke, beholding the astral of the professor standing at 
my bedside. 

I saw. What I saw was a subjective, or an instantaneous dream. 
Otherwise expressed, I saw a residual impression that was wholly 
within and not at all without, just as the double of the candle- 
flame alluded to is seen within and not without. I saw, how- 
ever, undeniably, a personality which to itself, and to the world, 
possesses objectivity. 

After a precisely similar manner, it is in science to be assumed 
that all visions are seen. The longer or shorter time a vision re- 
mains depends entirely on the receptivity existing with the brain- 
cells, the susceptibility being greater or less as influenced by cir- 
cumstances. The flame of an Argand burner, impressed upon a 
very irritable or sensitive retina, and then suddenly extinguished 
in an absolutely dark room, will continue to be seen sometimes 
for a period of several minutes. If a retina be unsensitive, all 
light disappears instantly with the original flame. 

The science of visions is not at all difficult to come at : to allow, 
however, of nothing back of vision is to pronounce at once the 
Christian's Bible and the Bibles of all other people deceptions and 
lies. It is to pronounce as well a fiat as to development; an assump- 
tion that there is nothing back of effect ; that nothing remains to be 
learned or understood. It is, undeniably, to pronounce the pro- 
nouncer a thing of strictly dual nature, a person utterly lacking as 



NINE TEE NTH' CENTUR V SENSE. 1 5 7 

to composition in the essence which distinguishes between men 
and brutes. 

The idea to be conveyed is that natural and spiritual law, as 
regard is had to relation of means to ends, is common law. The 
eye that sees neither fringed monsters nor vinegar-eels, comes to 
see both as it advances in the line of optical development. The 
line of optical development is the duplication of the common 
sense of sight by association with refined and high-power mag- 
nifying lenses. To see spiritual things, spiritual means are to be 
possessed. Natural sight and spiritual sight are exactly in accord 
with the instrument. To look through smeared glass is to see 
smears only. The form of inspiration, it is to be repeated, is the 
same : results accord with clear or smeared instruments. 

It is here that a spiritual reader will pause, that through means 
of looking in upon himself he may find clear explanation as to 
what is meant. I myself have had a ride upon Mahomet's camel, 
and have been carried to heaven. In turn I have been snatched 
from the hump by the spirit of Dante and whirled into hell. 

There are door-steps leading to the Spiritus Sanctus ; this is the 
third one. 



XI. 

NINETEENTH-CENTURY SENSE. 

Whether two or three or many years passed in intercourse 
with transcendental physics stands nothing to the purpose. 
The confrere and the doctor have been witness to so large an 
extent of manifestations in the particular direction that little or 
nothing seems left to see. It is indeed to be premised that ac- 
quaintanceship has been carried to its ultimatmn. 

The confrere has shown himself a wonderful medium. No 

desired signals on floor or table, no ghostly messages upon slates, 

but come responsive to his call. Solids pass through solids when 

so commanded; floating luminous hands seem ready to do his 

14 



158 



SPJRITUS SANCTUS. 



bidding. No cords, chains, or locks seem to have restraining 
force over him. He reads without seeing, and is fettered or un- 
fettered by invisible hands. 

Genius and medium are discovered to us in these manifestations 
as terms and conditions strictly interchangeable. Physics, whether 
of transcendental or mundane nature, is always and necessarily, 
as has been evolved, within the realm of common law ; there is 
never an end without relation to means. The manner of the 
spirit or genius of the confrere is somatic, — that is to say, it works 
with tools. A doubter, unappreciative of the identity of genius 
and of somatic instrumentation and medium as to performance, 
will not be likely to find himself lifted by the unfolding of pro- 
cesses. He will more likely denounce the fact which he accepted 
an hour ago, simply because his intelligence has been brought to 
comprehension of its means. He will still stand, however, over- 
whelmed with the miracle done with the water-pots at the mar- 
riage-feast, yet, because he has comprehension, after a manner, 
of a physical law concerned in the process, he will deny utterly 
the miracle as it repeats itself directly before him each season in 
the vineyard. 

What is just said is in consideration of what is to follow. Com- 
mon sense is incapable of anything save the uncomplicated pro- 
cesses of sight, taste, hearing, smell, and touch. These are the 
five media of animal relation with things external to itself. Un- 
educated senses are necessarily not reliable, for the reason that no 
two persons perceive alike by the use of them. What is beauty 
to one is ugliness to another ; harmony to one is discord to some 
other one ; the sweet to this tongue is the sour to that one ; a 
pleasant essence changes in the nose which smells to an offensive 
odor. Common sense is designed simply to relate things to wants 
that employ them ; it knows nothing, and is incapable of telling 
anything as to the real nature of a thing. 

A roofer finds in pigment a paint for the protection of his tin ; 
a Raphael discovers in the same color means to the expression of 
an inspiration. Color proves something entirely different to tinner 
and artist. The same thing becomes not at all the same thing ; 
earthy in one hand, it is heavenly in another hand. 



NINETEENTH-CENTURY SENSE. 159 

Common sense is incapable as to differentiating, measuring, or 
estimating. These latter qualities are strictly properties of educa- 
tion. Nineteenth-century sense differs from common sense as 
expressed by educated taste differing from common taste. Nine- 
teenth-century sense finds, or searches after, a law governing the 
miracle. It comprehends ventriloquism, and thus measures the 
voice overwhelming an Indian as speech is heard from a spirit of 
the air. It knows the arcana of chemistry, and from bottles, 
empty of everything, as estimated by an uneducated eye that looks 
on them, it pours forth a stream of living water. It shows a 
sitter's face transferred to a card. It takes a sheet of paper, im- 
maculately clean and white, and electrifies the ignorant as in 
presence of the sun a message appears upon it. It stealthily rubs 
a trace of mercury over a silver coin, and startles the beholder in 
discovering solidity turned into softness. 

Miracles, all of these, in the sense that anything is a miracle. 
Done by occult power, these things, in the sense that anything is 
occult. Everything is in law ; the matter is to understand law. 
Nineteenth-century sense is learning law rapidly. 

A whip is an appeal to a beast ; it stings the flesh : the hurt 
is soon gone. A whip is an appeal to man ; it makes a cut that 
is internal : the scar never fades out. Yet a lash is a lash. Dif- 
ference in a lash lies with what perceives difference. A thing 
is to the sense that uses it what to that sense it is found to be ; it 
is never anything else. 

Open is occult, save to an opener. What opens the shell of an 
oyster to the advancing tide is no mystery to an oysterman ; a 
child, on the contrary, beholds with wonderment. The sacra- 
mental wafer is an incomprehensible mystery to the ignorant. 
Appeal here is to unresponsive, uncultivated sense. A consecrated 
wafer is to the learned, at the same moment, a piece of dough 
and the body of Christ. Appeal here is to cultivated appreciative 
sense. 

Occult and open are what is found in them, and this finding, as 
understood, is different to different people. The confrere explains 
his long retirement and intercourse with the spirits. His spiritus 
functus is shown to be a common laboratory, his Familiars a free 



l6o SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

purse and the elements of the arts. Yet who may help results to 
individuals ? An unspiritual man unlearns in learning. A doubter 
doubts the more in seeing nothing while deeming that he has 
seen all. Still the pious flock to Naples in hope of beholding 
the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, but no single one 
of the multitude stops in his garden to consider the miracle of a 
bud thrust from a stick. The hand of the God, existing every- 
where upon the road, is beheld by devotees nowhere but at 
Naples. 

Differences are not to be helped, perhaps. The confrere sees 
what I do not. I see, not unlikely, what he does not. Appeals 
to men are after a various manner. 

The sequel to transcendental physics opens at a breaking-up 
stance with a long and hearty laugh on the part of the confrere. 
He retires for a few moments, and returns with a large box con- 
taining his ** Familiars." 

"We will unravel," he says, "the mysteries of the occult. 
Spirits, show yourselves!" he commands. The spirits did show 

themselves. They proved to be A full description of 

what they proved to be has not only been written out, but oc- 
cupies proof pages from which at the present hour the writer 
is engaged in expunging the experiences ; this out of the fact 
that the whole matter as it shows in print seems so supremely 
and ridiculously simple, that while personally I do not fail to 
laugh at the deceptions as boisterously as does the medium, yet I 
am unwilling to even indirectly reflect more than has been done 
on the common sense so valued as a possession by many honest 
spiritualists, who esteem as little better than a fool him who denies 
the seeing of what has been seen and the hearing of what has 
been heard. I put the matter in a line by saying that the confrere 
made a medium of me, in the line of transcendental physics, in the 
course of a few hours. I know to-day just what he knows of the 
art, albeit well satisfied that twenty years of practice would not 
yield me his wonderful skill in legerdemain. It is to be added 
that the matter lies with not seeing what is seen nor hearing what 
is heard. The whole is a fact of sense deception, and no demon- 
stration might be offered more directly in point of proof as to 



CONFUSIONS. l6l 

the unreliability and nothingness of what is lauded as common 
sense. 

Here another paradox. A little multitude of deceptions ex- 
plained as lying with unreliability of the senses. As contrast to 
this, things defined as lying with the senses and being never else 
than what the senses make them to be. Let then a putting be 
after this manner. A thing amounts to its lesson or result. 

There are door-steps leading to the Spiritus Sanctus ; this is 
the fourth one. 



XII. 

CONFUSIONS. 

A PERIOD between the old and the new. The tmie, like all 
moving times, comprehensions not in place, and neither hand, 
heart, nor brain knowing satisfactorily where anything is. Believ- 
ing, doubting; hoping, despairing. 

Inquiry, directed by little or great learning, finding God and 
the beautiful and the merciful everywhere. Observations, influ- 
enced by the same nature of erudition, seeing the devil and the 
hateful and the pitiless everywhere. 

Looking as an optimist, and beholding nothing but an over- 
ruling Providence. Looking as a pessimist, and finding little but 
the malevolent. Looking as a philosopher, and seeing the mean- 
ing of things to lie with paradoxes. 

Finding the macrocosm of the universe in the microcosm of a 
grate. Seated in meditative mood before glowing coals, having 
before one a panorama of life. Flames rushing up the throat of 
a chimney, ashes falling into a pit. Red changing to gray. Hot 
becoming cold. Power declining to weakness. Animate sinking 
/ 14* 



1 62 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

to inanimate. Form losing itself in formless. Identity merged in 
contrariety. Image back into essence. Phenomenon again be- 
come noumenon. 

Changes in the universal which reverse themselves ; ashes get- 
ting upward by means of the stalks of growing plants; gray morn- 
ing lightened into red evening; coldness made warmth by relation 
with a mid-day sun; puny childhood waxed into giant manhood; 
decomposed fertilizers correlated into life-sustaining corn; running 
water as solidity carved in ice ; germs which no sight can differ- 
entiate enlarging into individual selfhoods ; ideas become living 
form through image; waves falling back into the sea. 

Water cooled in the depths of forest springs for the delectation 
of thirsty lips. Slime running in ditches for the gullets of tad- 
poles for which it is food. Air in which birds fly blithely. Dense 
woods for the hiding of timid deer. The sea for fishes. Broad- 
chested, full-throated, bellowing wild herds; the prairies for 
these. Valleys for fruitage ; the mountains for outlook. Pain to 
warn of danger. Joy to commend the right. Bodies terrestrial 
and bodies celestial. Difference between life and death no differ- 
ence at all. Bodies for the materialized; bodies for the de- 
materialized. Bodies heavy enough to weigh down scales and to 
wield heavy tools ; bodies light enough to walk upon water or to 
float in the air. Bodies visible and invisible. Corporal and 
spiritual essences. Passions of the body, ecstasies of the soul. 
Joy and luxury everywhere. Exhilarating songs. Sparkling 
wines. Children full to wastefulness of costly luxuries. Women 
bespangled with diamonds pleasuring until the break of morning. 
Well people, people never tired; lounges and couches everywhere. 
Men possessed of coffers that overflow. Prayer never made with- 
out immediate answer. Prayer scarcely breathed until immensely 
reciprocated. 

Considering the love of God and the kindness of men; the 
lovely heaven and the beautiful earth ; nature's abundant gifts. A 
world filled with beings, every being blessed with office ; a world 
of law where nothing is error but what opposes law ; a world of 
absolute justice. A world going round and round forever; 
having no stopping-place. Considering the feeding of helpless 



CONFUSIONS. ,5^ 

things by helpers; the stabling of cows in well-littered stalls; 
horses pampered with golden oats ; swine filled to fatness, their 
skins glossy with oil ; chickens and ducks and turkeys tenderly 
housed and cared for. Considering intelligent man working for 
the unintelligent brute. Considering a humming-bird fed on nectar 
by a flower. 

Considering beautiful scenes ; a field of clustered wheat-sheaves, 
the intervening ground yellow with undried stubble. Over the field 
white and gray cloud-rifts mellowing into haziness mid-day sun- 
rays. All around a fence of living green. Here low bushes 
giving wild blackberries, dwarfed trees bearing the chincapin 
clambered after eagerly by the children of farmers. In the front 
of a picture a great oak having wide-spreading branches, under 
which harvesters gather, wiping the sweat from nut-brown arms, 
or, with long-stretched necks, drinking from home-grown gourds. 
Beyond the field a world of other fields ; scenes as fair and riches 
as plentiful stretching away in the near lands and away into dis- 
tant lands ; beauties and riches and luxuries for everybody. 

Here a midnight full moon illumining a plashing stream flowing 
out of green depths lost to sight in the distance. In the nearness 
a damming back and tumble of water over fallen logs ; red moss 
clothing an overhanging rock. Along fern-bordered flat banks 
clusters of the pink almond blossoms. Arboring trees, their leafy 
crowns amongst the clouds. Tangle and thicket and impene- 
trable wild, confining thought and imagination to a single spot. 
A picture to carry away for a frame, — a picture composing the 
looker to rest. 

Considering, on the other hand, cries and groans coming from 
a wreck at sea ; banks of merciless, unrestrained waves falling 
upon the deck and filling the hold of a fated ship ; swirls, long 
and angry, gathering strength in a race of miles, high-topped, 
phosphorescent, tumbling masses of water washing praying fathers 
and mothers and screaming, terrified children into the jaws of 
sharks ; torn sails, splintered planks, everything rifted and broken 
up, nothing left to take hold of. No hearing ear, no helping 
hand, no Providence. 



i64 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Considering sick and maimed persons growing worse daily. 
Considering the unheard supplications of priests and the unhelped 
workers in hospitals. Considering the cancer-stricken pushed 
into a grave. Considering tornadoes and the overflow of rivers. 
Considering the stopped-up throat of a diphtheritic babe. Con- 
sidering a simple old woman, who, with Bible in one hand and 
cross and beads in the other, climbs wearily a long hill leading to 
a temple ; considering whether or not the old woman will get 
what she goes after. Considering the nun, with her black veil, 
who marries Christ. Considering the trying to be better than 
God shows himself to be, by keeping up coast-stations for the help 
of wrecked sailors. 

Thoughts of trembling, terrified swine in a comer of a pen, 
trying vainly to get away from a knife. Thoughts of chickens 
and ducks and turkeys, pulled from a roost, their heads twisted 
off, their bodies thrown upon a snow-bank to flop out the death- 
agony. Thoughts of a humming-bird's helplessness in the hands 
of a boy. Thoughts of beeves sliced into meat, and of the stuck 
throats of heifers. 

Thoughts of children crying for bread. Thoughts of weary 
women toiling into the midnight hour. Thoughts of homeless 
men and the " move along" of the policeman. Thoughts of unre- 
quited labor. Thoughts of prayer as prayer, of beseechings going 
continuously to the God, but never, never, never an answer com- 
ing from the sky. Doubt everywhere. 

Atlantis, — not at all an unparalleled story. The time, perhaps, 
a summer's afternoon ; nameless thousands in holiday garb cele- 
brating a feast-day, throwing kisses to the God, chanting paeans 
of thankfulness for abundant blessings seen everywhere, in pros- 
tration before a host, confident under a sheltering arm. Priests 
in church attire, maidens bearing garlands, parents happy in chil- 
dren and children joyous in parents, marrying and being given in 
marriage, building and tearing down, planting and rooting up. 

An ominous rumble coming toward the land from out the 

depth of the sea ; a sudden overwhelming crash, a mighty water 
rising and a continent sinking, mountain waves drowning meas- 
ureless valleys, hills covered over and disappearing, nameless 



CONFUSIONS. 



i6S 



thousands aghast and screaming for mercy, nameless thousands 
bruised, buried, crushed by the surging, whirling torrent. 

A very little later, and long, soft-flowing waves in dreamy 

stillness rock to sleep with mother-like softness a gull resting 
upon the sea, — a nameless single bird floating upon the surface of 
deep waters that roll over Atlantis, over its streets, over its lines 
of shade-trees, over its priests, its maidens, its parents. 

Doubt everywhere, belief nowhere. Constrained to laugh at 
the silliness of people who materialize for the God a human ear ; 
kneeling never any more j faith and trust gone with the winds j 
certitude a myth. 

There are door-steps leading to the Spiritus Sanctus; this is the 
fifth one. 



1 66 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

XIII. 

PRESTIGIATION. 

As one in reading sometimes lays down his book 
with view to collateral yet relevant thought, so the 
three succeeding chapters are here introduced by 
reason of connection with other three going before ; 
they are steps in a way leading to the Spiritus Sanctus. 

A circle has its commencement alike anywhere. 
Prestigiation is to be commended as being quite as 
good a beginning of the Rosicrucian way as any other ; 
the Rosicrucian way being a circle. Referring to the 
spiritistic excitement of a few years back, recognition 
is had that as people at large are concerned, lessons 
lie with Objective and not with Subjective. Spiritism 
contrasts with Spiritualism as does Objectivity with 
Subjectivity, both being one while seeming contraries. 
The tipping of a table, whether effected by the clum- 
siest of trickeries, by a utilized employment of mag- 
netism or electricity, or by the hand of the God him- 
self, has common significance in that the movement 
lies with a law that is universal. The law of voice, 
for example, is one, with difference. The squeak of 
Catiline just born is the oration of Catiline grown and 
perfected. 

A boy whose attention could not be attracted by the 
intangible of gravitation has his interest alive instantly 
in the presence of an overturned barrow with its load 
spilled upon the ground. A miller uses for the pur- 
poses of his wheel a down -running stream, but concerns 



PRESTIGIA TION. 



167 



himself little or not at all as to that getting back of the 
water which keeps his stream a circle. 

The lack of seeing gravitation in overturned wheel- 
barrows and evaporation in down-running streams is 
the lack of others besides boys and millers. 

It is known to more than a little multitude of people 
that a fund was left, several years back, to the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania, in trust, to be employed in ex- 
amination of the so-called ** spiritistic" phenomena of 
the times. The gentleman leaving this fund had im- 
plicit faith in the reality of such manifestations, and 
it was his intention, as is well known to the writer, to 
secure influential means, first, as to endorsement, which 
he never doubted would be the result of an examina- 
tion, and, second, as to extension of a good enjoyed 
by himself. This trust being accepted, a committee 
was appointed to carry out its intentions. 

ThQ personnel oi this committee impressed the com- 
munity as being exceptionally good. The result of the 
work of the committee impressed the community as 
being exceptionally nothing. *' Looking on glass but 
not through it," was the attitude of the committee. 
An only thing seen was surface. "Not deceived," 
comprised the substance of the report made. A Rosi- 
crucian would look on such a committee of men as de- 
ceived beyond the credulity of a thinker to comprehend. 
Nothing seen where there was so much to see ! A com- 
mittee led on for weeks and months by tricksters, see- 
ing in all this time, even at the very end, not even so 
much as a first letter of a great alphabet lying with 
tricks, — lying with any trick. 

Prestigiation as commencement of exploration among 



1 68 SFIRITUS SANCTUS, 

the fields of Spiritus Sanctus has to its advantage that 
it attracts equally the cultivated and the uncultivated. 
The latter illustrates sitters at a circus overawed by 
tricks of agility and strength. The former illustrates 
the physicist who approaches the gymnasts and feels 
their muscles. 

A trick supposes something else than what the trick 
is, yet is a thing, anything, whatever it may be, not 
in itself but in something else. Everything is in some- 
thing else than itself until the God is reached. Com- 
prehension stops with the word God, as this is a name 
to which induction leads and at which it stays. Who 
God is, and what God is, as to origin, shows itself as 
none of a man's business ; this for the reason that in- 
duction stops at such point. Whatever induction sug- 
gests, or leads to, this is man's concern. Where in- 
duction stops, here ceases man's concern. Induction 
stops with God as Noumenon, — not as Noumena, but 
as Noumenon. Noumenon is the word signifying that 
out of which all things come and back into which all 
things go ; this forever and forever. It is not of the 
slightest importance to man that the Noumenon may 
not here be well named. The circle of man lies un- 
completed only as new inductions are found to exist 
in and arise out of old ones. Noumenon ends induc- 
tion. Matter associates with induction as related with 
it in question of origin. Ego likewise offers question of 
" whence." Beyond the God is the unthinkable. The 
unthinkable is one with a thing outside of man's circle.* 

Induction was apparently not used by the committee 

* The subject is discussed in " Man and his World." 



PRESTIGIATION. 1 69 

alluded to; certainly it had no part in the investi- 
gations. The idea was to find presence or absence 
of supernatural with things presented for observation. 
There is no supernatural this side of God ; hence su- 
pernatural was not to be found. Had so massive a 
thing been found by the committee as a mountain sus- 
pended in the air, the phenomenon would not have lain 
with the mountain, but with gravitation. Had a tree 
been grown in their presence from seed to fruit in a 
single day, it would not have been supernatural, but 
simply unfamiliar. Difference between such a growth 
and that met with in field or garden is of degree and as- 
sociation. Myself having forced the growth of weeping 
willows twenty feet in a single season shows me that by 
knowing more than I do about the matter I might force 
them sixty feet ; more than this, that I might break off a 
branch at night and have a sixty-foot tree in the morning. 

Prestigiation is legerdemain to the uninitiated only ; 
know-how ends mystery. But exposure of one mys- 
tery is always offering of another. So on from mystery 
to mystery ; so on from lesser to greater. 

Study of growth leads to study of force. Sight of a 
feather floating in the air leads to sight of an invisible 
supporting atmosphere. Comprehension of atmosphere 
leads to appreciation of rarer things back of it as these 
exist in gases. To consider gravitation is to recognize 
invisible as stronger than visible \ is to see sun, moon, 
and stars supported by an invisible that is stronger 
than visible. — Paracelsus is right, **The beginning of 
knowledge is beginning of understanding of the super- 
natural." 

Let passage be made to dreams and visions. 

H 15 



lyo SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 



DREAMS. 

The highest wisdom is attainable only through direct 
revelation made to the individual. 

Leaving with a reader the confusions, or lessons, as 
it may be, of the recitals preceding, advance is to be 
made to a consideration of the nature of dreams and 
visions. 

Dreams are of two kinds. Yet are the kinds related. 
Illustration of such difference and relation lies with 
the twitching of the limbs of a sleepy person con- 
trasted with similar movements under direction of 
will. Both these kinds of movements lie with mus- 
cular action resultant of nerve impressions. The first 
is of strict association with automatic action, which 
action is independent of direction or Egoism, hence 
is meaningless ; legs are thought of, not Ego. The 
latter directs attention to Ego, not to limbs. 

An ordinary dream has its crudities explainable 
in imperfect instrumentation. A brain half asleep is 
likable to a piano out of tune. With neither instru- 
ment is capability to make proper immediate response. 
The thoughts of a page being read are thoughts by 
an Ego. As a pen splutters with its user or works 
easily, thus influencing the appearances of a writing, 
so expression given thoughts rests with the bad or 
good working condition of a brain. If attempt be 
made to write thoughts when a brain is half asleep, 



DREAMS. 171 

result is akin with attempt to play music when a piano 
is out of tune. 

Because few people are Egoistic to an extent of in- 
dependency of ordinary means of instrumentation, the 
brain is always attempted to be used by Ego in its ex- 
cursionizings during sleep-conditions, the sleep affect- 
ing the brain but not the Ego ; hence confusion, — things 
being heard strangely and confusedly by the ears, seen 
strangely and confusedly by the eyes, touched, tasted, 
and smelled strangely and confusedly by the other 
half-asleep organs of sense. An ordinary, or confused, 
dream never occurs where perfect sleep exists. A 
brain put sound asleep dismisses instantly the halluci- 
nations of a mania-a-potuist ; this for the reason that 
Egoistic activity as here existing is at once rid of per- 
versions lying with instrument. Sound sleep on the 
part of an ordinary man means stillness of Ego by 
reason of absence of organs : illustration lies with a 
broken-legged man who ceases to walk out of fault of 
his limbs. 

Ego is assumed as never sleeping. Immortality is 
one with eternal consciousness. Consciousness, how- 
ever, may be lacking as to means of expression : hence 
a tongue asleep Ego is temporarily without means for 
talking, a nose asleep Ego is without means for smelling ; 
so alike as to seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting. 
But it is not Ego that is asleep. 

Now, concerning the dreams of the sensitives, — 
the poets, the musicians, the communers with spirits, 
the architects. 

Can a dream be independent ? Putting this query 
in other language, Can Ego act disassociated from 



172 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

its brain? If reference be here had to ordinary brain 
as familiar to the anatomist, the answer of Rosicrucian- 
ism is, Yes. Surely Ego loses its ordinary brain at the 
moment of so-called death ! Not to reply with Rosi- 
crucianism is to relegate man to oblivion. An acorn 
finds itself one with the massive trunk, the gnarled 
and wide-spreading limbs, and the countless leaves of the 
oak-tree. An acorn drops to the ground minus trunk, 
limbs, and leaves. A dropped acorn is found later one 
with hypostases of trunk, limbs, and leaves. As in an 
acorn are the hypostases of its needs, so with Ego are 
the hypostases of its needs. 

Brain is indeed one with paradox. It is more than 
an arbitrary arrangement that divides the encephalic 
man into cerebrum, cerebellum, pons Varolii, and 
medulla oblongata. No part sleeps but cerebrum. A 
momentary forgetfulness by the other parts would 
mean bodily death to a sleeper. Cerebrum is the in- 
strument of the Ego. The other parts are instruments 
of organic life ; being never wholly, indeed but little, 
under direction of Ego. Distinction between man as 
Ego and his habitation, or environment, is so plain as 
to be without confusion to him who understands the 
distinction between the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic 
nervous systems. 

Dreams that are one with communications made to 
a sleeping man by a something apart from himself, 
whatever the something may be, are independent of 
his cerebrum \ for such dreams would not be the plain 
and perfect things they are if semi-consciousness of 
the anterior brain existed to confuse them. A dream 
of the purely inspirational class, that is, a dream which 



VISIONS, 



173 



is one with communication made to the Ego of a 
sleeping man by an intelligence apart from his own, is 
clear as to its character, whatever the character may 
be; the poet gets his lines, the musician his score, 
the architect his design, the philosopher his aphorism. 
Soul, like to Ego, never sleeps, and is most alive to 
relationship with its divine source when eyes are closed 
in slumber and ears are shut against external sounds. 
After such manner of communication is much of what 
has been given and is being given by the God. The 
Christian Bible, where not simple story of history, is 
recital of dreams. 



XV. 

VISIONS. 



It is not thought wonderful that the face of a per- 
son or other apparently objective sight comes before a 
looker as he gazes on burning coals or at a cloud- 
spread sky. Everybody meets such sights occasion- 
ally. A Sensitive sees them let his eyes be turned 
where they may. 

Sensitives, let it be recalled, are not sensitive alike to 
all things : hence reference again to the poet, the musi- 
cian, the architect, and the philosopher. Things seen 
in glowing coals, in clouds, in the fields, in the waters 
of flowing streams, in up-turned clay-banks, accord 
with what is the sensitivity of a beholder. 

Visions are not to be associated with communica- 
tions of the God to men, save in the sense that in a 
15* 



174 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



law perceivable and enjoyable by him who is able to 
perceive and enjoy lies such communication. Visions 
are within, never without. The sitter by one's side 
sees the picture in the coals only as it is pointed out 
by the more sensitive companion. A sitter by one's 
side, not being at all sensitive, sees nothing at the 
pointed-out place. The lines of a poet, the scores of 
a musician, the Vox Dei that arouses rapture, these 
are never elsewhere than internal. Inventions, scores, 
lines, designs, aphorisms, all are self making. Inter- 
nal is musician, internal is poet, internal is architect; 
internal is philosopher. Internal is what hypostasis 
is. Internal is external. 

Here an important paradox propounds itself. Imag- 
inary things, so called, are the real things, nor are 
those other things called by people at large real things 
anything but shadows. Question resolves itself into 
meaning. 

Here is to be repeated the aphorism of explanation : 
A thing is to a sense that uses it what to the sense it 
seems to be : it is never anything else. Not to possess 
acceptancy of this aphorism by reason of an under- 
standing of it that demonstrates its absolute truthful- 
ness, thus affording knowledge of man's command of 
the Universal, is to have made no departure from the 
perception of uneducated animal senses. 

Study and understanding of this aphorism impress 
the writer as being one with study and understanding 
of life. 

Things imagined and things material are of similar 
import ; both existences being in the User, and being 
nowhere else. Tangible is imagination materialized. 



VISIONS. 



175 



Materialization is with him who can materialize. With 
man is power to make the kind of world in which he 
elects to live. 

A star seen in the sky by an Umbratile was re- 
marked by no one of hundreds who at the time 
walked upon the streets ; the Umbratile, however, saw 
it. Once upon a time, now nearly nineteen hundred 
years ago, three Magi saw a star, and followed it to 
where a young child lay in a manger. A cross seen in 
the sky by Constantine was seen by no single one of 
legions led to victory by reason of the sign. Illus- 
tration, appreciable by the crudest, lies with a hint 
afforded by Paracelsus. A wood-carver sees, by reason 
of his imagination, a beautiful image imprisoned in a 
log of wood, which log has been sold him by a wood- 
chopper for a groat. Cutting into this log, a form is 
found liberated almost too costly for price to buy. 
Such an image, or other equally wonderful one, is dis- 
covered by a carver in any and every tree-trunk brought 
him by a chopper. Cuttings made by choppers dis- 
cover alone cord-wood and chips. 

Imaginations, when materialized, take the name 

of art ; when remaining as pure idea, the name given 
them is inspirations. 

, . . Analysis rests head upon hand, and inclines 
here to reconsider experiments made with the confrere^ 
— experiments first wondered at, then laughed at.* Were 
the wonder and the laughter all that was held by the 
experiments? There was, at any rate, added proof to 
the Aristotelian aphorism that " common sense is little 

* Refer to preceding chapters. 



176 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

better than no sense at all." There was proof of the 
oneness of ignorance and mystery. There was, unde- 
niably, demonstration that blindness lies not alone with 
eyes. Holding, as do all things, what is found in the 
things, shall one not here be led to consider of capa- 
bility? What is the confrere but another carver show- 
ing other kinds of images? An image liberated ceases 
to be a mystery. Mystery when opened is no longer 
occult; repetition this of the illustration of water as 
water, of water as the gases oxygen and hydrogen, of 
water as a world of microscopic life. Means to ends : 
this the law of the Universal ; the prestigiation of 
the confrere, exciting first the wonder, then the smiles, 
of the Umbratile ; the visions of the Umbratile enlist- 
ing first the concern, later the ridicule, of the confrere. 

The dual of the Umbratile, oblivious for the 

time of means to ends, thinks to explain away visions 
by reference to vaso-constriction of the nerve-centres 
of equilibration, not seeing that similar reference to 
the eyes would equally apply to the explaining away 
of objects of ordinary sight. He attempts also to illus- 
trate visions as resultant of optical defects, but is com- 
pelled, out of wider examination, to find his cases 
exceptional.* 

Every experiment practised and every vision beheld 
are equally realities. The thought here considers the 
world lying within a world as this relates with sub- 
jectivity. It considers demons seen by a mania-a- 



* Sense-deception, alluded to at termination of preceding chapter 
xi., is antagonized by practice of the process of exclusion. Illustra- 
tions are afforded in the first four paragraphs of preceding chapter x. 



VISIONS. 177 

potuist. It takes in, too, the candlesticks beheld at 
Patmos, and the part of a hand that was seen writing 
on the plaster of the wall at Babylon. It does not 
leave unconsidered a couplet and lily-sprays which 
later are to show as the inspiration of this book. 

Nothing is but as something is found in it. Out of 
a couplet and three lily-sprays, understood to be seen 
subjectively, is gradually being evolved, as one person 
is concerned, entire indifference, if not, indeed, con- 
tempt, for what is commonly esteemed the meaning of 
success and prominence in life. Words on a wall 
proved a sword piercing to his death the heart of 
Belshazzar. Seven candlesticks constitute the Revela- 
tion. 

It is true, as said by Paracelsus; '* In knowledge is 
understanding of the supernatural." 

Many years ago it happened the Umbratile to pursue 
a long and fruitless search after a certain mystical 
book. This search had been abandoned for some 
time, when accident discovered the volume one day 
upon the dust-covered shelves of a public library. It 
will not be difficult to appreciate an enthusiasm ex- 
cited by sight of the long-coveted treasure, nor will it 
be doubted that few minutes were lost in securing 
measure of the contents. Opening the pages at ran- 
dom, a first thing meeting the eye was a picture of the 
signet-ring of the writer.* This ring showed a dove 
half-emerged from a black cloud, holding in its beak a 
spray of lilies. At the time no particular impression 
seemed made by this ring and its sign ; yet the reader 

* Aurora. Jacob Behmen. 



178 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

is dull indeed who perceives not that it was this appar- 
ently long-forgotten spray of flowers which converted 
itself after the many years into three sprays, seen in a 
dream shortly to be described, and made practical the 
meaning of the hypostases. 

Whence come candlesticks seen by saints, and 

words of fate encountered by tyrants, and couplets 
and lily-sprays beheld by an earnest seeker after truth, 
come also demons seen by a mania-a-potuist, as well 
the ills and vexations met with everywhere by him who 
will not be an optimist. Truly, origin is one, as the 
Universal is one. Difference as to things seen lies 
never elsewhere than with a seer. Clouds are both 
black and golden. Poison and medicine are in the 
common plant. Taste is never but as tongue is. Odor 
is alone where there are noses. Nothing is anything 
else but what it is to the sense that uses it. Perception 
is eternally with the percipient. 

Subjective and Objective ! it is alone an illuminate 
who is able to comprehend the oneness. Sights beheld 
through the imagination and sights beheld through 
the eyes, — there is no difference as to the reality. 
Here highest and most beautiful wisdom and here 
the fulness of the universal to an initiate, albeit here 
foolishness and emptiness to the unspiritual. 

Let a matter be here considered. Is it or is it not 
the case that "state of mind" constitutes a man's 
comfort or discomfort ? Does a man suffer from fear 
who is not afraid ? Can a man be made to feel the 
pangs of death who is knowing absolutely to the fact 
that there is no death? When fever attacks a man, 
and he is found overwhelmed by horrible nightmares, 



l^ISIONS, 179 

could apparitions partake of aught but the beautiful if 
acquaintance had not been made with the ugly? 

Imagination seeks according as it is sent on search 
by an Ego j it finds what it looks after ; it never comes 
home empty-handed ? 

Something to be added. Imagination is one 

with capability. Imagination may ascend or descend 
or go sideways. It is likable to a sun-ray, which, 
being thrown into a dark and apparently empty room, 
discovers millions of inhabitants floating in the line of 
its track. 

Hail, Imagination ! Thou which art the true phi- 
losopher's stone ! Thou which art means of creation ! 

. . . Wonderful outlook ! Wonderful inlook ! Noth- 
ing pushing a man forward, nothing holding him 
back, — save himself. Man a god, a devil ; high, low, 
coarse, fine; smelling, not smelling; tasting, not 
tasting; touching, not touching; hearing, not hear- 
ing ; seeing, not seeing. 

. . . Gifted with perception of the true reality, O 
Illuminate! with what associations shall a man elect 
to live? The Now an eternal Now. Space without 
centre or circumference. Poison and remedy in com- 
mon plants. Drowning and refreshment in the same 
water. Clouds black or golden, according as looked 
at. Snow, a white sheet breeding shivering, or a 
wealth of crystals dropped down upon the fields. 
Nothing that is, but as the Is is made by him who 
uses it. 

The holder of the pen, following the leading of an 
impulse, has wandered quite a thousand miles since 



i8o SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

last he sat before these pages. Within the time of a 
single day during these wanderings he has had dis- 
covered to him the extreme poverty of his personal 
inspirations in having been a witness to more than 
three hundred thousand materializations of visions 
beheld at one time or another by fellow-countrymen, 
every one of which visions has had such demonstra- 
tion made of its oneness with reality as to have be- 
come feelable and usable by the least sensitive among 
men. The visions alluded to relate with material 
things, being of strict likeness and relation, how- 
ever, with couplet and lilies, with the great star seen 
by an Umbratile, and with sights beheld in glowing 
coals. 

Foolishness, indeed, to an unvisionary man, are 
visions seen in red coals, and visionary great stars; 
foolishness, however, because the man is unapt. 
To say that things imagined and things real are of 
common import, and to propose that both are alike 
practically usable, is to invite from the unapt man 
criticism not at all complimentary to what is esteemed 
common sense. Here lies with the critic miscon- 
ception which it is not at all likely he is able to cor- 
rect. A critic plausibly questions if a meal imagined 
be one with a meal eaten. The fault of the critic 
rests with his plane of looking at a matter. As- 
suredly it is neither a written nor printed line which 
is the poem of a poet. A score is not the sonnet ; 
drawings are not designs. As assuredly, however, is 
it the case that lines, scores, and drawings are the 
only poems, music, and designs that "common sense" 
is able to conceive or to take hold of. Planes relate 



VISIONS, l8i 

variously with necessities of the body and capabilities 
of the Ego. Body requires meat for its sustenance; 
Ego is not a thing having a mouth. There is an ap- 
petite of taste and another appetite of smell. The 
first is satisfied only with bread, which is a material 
that is to be handled and bit into; the latter has its 
necessity filled alone by odor, which is a material that 
is subservient to the use of neither fingers nor teeth. 

The materializations witnessed by the holder of the 
pen are to be seen by any person who will visit a 
patent-office. Multitudinous show-cases at Washing- 
ton hold the many seen by the writer. To under- 
stand the material things seen as being wholly and 
purely materializations of imaginations this patent- 
office will be wisely entered through the statuary- 
room of the capitol, where, to the left of the door, is 
the carved image of Robert Fulton, portrayed as he 
struggles for means to materialize, or show, a steam- 
boat to the eyes and uses of ordinary people. A 
critic, seeing, yet seeing nothing, still decrying the 
oneness of imagination and reality, repeats his ques- 
tion as to the meal imagined and the meal eaten. 
Answer is both no and yes. No, certainly, to the 
critic, as his query relates with bodily wants and takes 
no account of the spiritual ; yes, as assuredly, to a 
questioner who differentiates between Ego and en- 
vironment, and who has taken in the difference as to 
the senses of taste and smell. 

The things seen in a patent-office are never the 
things themselves, but representations of them. Be- 
cause the things seen are crude approximations ef- 
fected by use of crude materials, the representations 
i6 



1 82 SFIRITUS SANCTUS. 

are seldom found to work with a perfectness of an 
original as this exists in the ideal. Poems are never 
upon paper as they are in the imagination. Notes 
are not found distinctive enough to express shades of 
melody. Drawings are lacking as difference contrasts 
with mental architectural designs. 

A steamboat existing with the imagination of Rob- 
ert Fulton, and in which he could travel the world 
over, requires a union of wood and iron and the hand- 
work of a hundred men before the boxes and bales of 
commerce can be transported by it from wharf to 
neighboring wharf. Difference here is with what is 
to be carried. Intangible relates with intangible; 
tangible associates with tangible. For a hungry body 
meat is a necessity. Where hunger is with soul a 
spread table is an offence. 

Passing from Fulton and the form-makers, the eye 
of one who continues leftward from the great door 
will find itself quickly attracted to an upturned face 
looking at imaginations without apparent thought as 
to any environing of them by material. The face is 
that of Roger Williams, the Puritan. As this face 
shows from the marble, it expresses a life for which no 
Fulton had occasion to materialize a steamboat, nor 
any Stephenson reason to build a locomotive. What 
a delight and an illumination is it to gaze into this 
upturned face, catching out of the reflection faint sem- 
blance of what is to be seen by one of spiritual devel- 
opment; this lessening not at all admiration for the 
materializations of the steamboat maker, but opening 
conception as to conveyances which carry without the 
aid either of wheels or material motive-power. Cir- 



"SEEING WHATr 183 

cumstances alter cases. Roger Williams, left to him- 
self, would have lived in as close alliance with the 
spiritual, remaining in Wales, as when, banished from 
his colony of Massachusetts, he turned for company 
to the inhabitants of a world unseeable by common 
eyes.* 

Considering that the multitudinous things seen in 
a patent-office are simply representations of ideas or 
imaginations, and that an equal reality is found to 
exist with both, it becomes impressed that what is 
easiest of attainment offers most to the philosopher; 
for, as it is with things living in an inventor's imag- 
ination and things seen materialized upon the shelves 
of show-cases, so it is with all things, nothing in re- 
ality being anywhere or being anything save as the 
anywhere and the anything are to the wants of a user. 



XVI. 
"SEEING WHAT?" 

Concerning a Vision and a Dream and what has been found in 
them. 

Day, night, the day again ; 
Yesterday, to-morrow, eternally the same. 

The page being turned back to the concluding 
paragraph of the chapter on Psychics, text is found 
for the present one. 

Seeing what ? Seeing what one sees. Nothing less, 
nothing more. Seeing according to fitness or unfitness 

* Where the word spirit or spiritual is used in these pages relation 
is always with Ego and not with Soul. 



1 84 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

as this resides with education and cultivation. Seeing 
instantly or seeing only after a long time, according to 
sensitivity. Seeing finally what is found or what is not 
found to be with a thing seen. Here import of lines 
with which the pages begin. " Sight of ships by him who 
cultivates ships, sight of poems by him who cultivates 
poetry, sight of scores by him who cultivates music, 
sight of designs by him who cultivates architecture, 
sight of the Divinity by him who cultivates the divine." 
A modern scientist, of large renown,, possessed of 
great sensitivity, natural and cultivated, gives out that 
new things or combinations of things are continually 
offering themselves to his view ; these things are one 
with visions. 

Just how a day referred to — a 28th of December — 
was spent, the holder of the pen is unable to say, by 
reason of length of time intervening between the date 
and the present one, and the further fact that noth- 
ing concerning the matter is found set down. If the 
day happened to be the first one of the week, or if 
it was one of rare idle days found at times at the ser- 
vice of the most busy, there is little doubt but that it 
was consumed in watching the curling smoke of a 
hearth-fire rolling away through the throat of a chim- 
ney. Whether, however, the day was passed in medi- 
tative mood or in getting through the anxious details 
of a doctor's life, it was -the case that a Rosicrucian 
dual which the holder of the pen will now assume to 
separate from its practical double, and to individual- 
ize as the favored one gifted with the enjoyment of 
a beautiful life (being the ''Umbratile, or Doppel- 



"SEEING WHATr 185 

gaenger," of him who presents this other him), this 
Umbratile went to bed, where he had not lain long be- 
fore he was startled by a projection in staring white 
letters out of the blackness of the room, of the couplet 
heading the paragraph. There was no deception. He 
rubbed his eyes, to assure himself of not being asleep ; 
he sat up in bed, scanning eagerly the strange sight j 
he got up and lighted the gas, writing the lines down, 
that morning should not argue for a dream.* 

But what as to the import of the lines? To the 
Umbratile they meant nothing but a subjective ghost, 
which his science was actively proceeding to lay when 
the thought or word or idea, *' write," came over him 
with an impulse quite confounding the intention of 
analysis, the place of which it took. The Umbratile 
is not without a facetious aspect; not immaterial 
enough is, perhaps, the better putting of it ] certainly 
it is the case that he is too closely identified with his 
fellow-double to be sufficiently clear of the earthy for 
full suitability for high purposes. Be this as it may, a 

* Paracelsus has a better word than Umbratile, — it is Evestrum. 
"Only the wise," he says, "pay attention to what comes through 
their Evestra; others treat such things with contempt. Persons," he 
goes on to say, " are capable of a nature so spiritual and a soul so 
exalted that they can approach the highest spiritual plane at a time 
when their bodies are asleep. Persons who allow such separability 
to the Evestra have seen the glory of God, the happiness of the 
saintly, and the wretchedness of the wicked ; and they do not forget 
their dreams, but remember them to the end of their days. Such 
things are entirely possible, and the greatest mysteries may be laid 
open to the perception of the spirit ; and if any earnestly desire such 
gifts he has only to cultivate that found within himself through which 
they come, and thus be enabled to see the Mysteria Dei, and to 
understand them as well as has Moses, Isaiah, and John." 
16* 



1 86 . SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

response made seemed not in spiritual correspondence. 
*' Good Lord," he said, " or thou, Mephistopheles, or 
thou, the other thou, the subjective Satan, what is 
there to write, seeing that what has appeared is already- 
written?" In place of an impression dwindling away, 
other words joined themselves to the first, ** Certi- 
tude. Summum bonum." The matter was growing in 
curious interest. Here were a couplet and words 
placed in juxtaposition, all coming out of darkness, 
and neither lines nor words showing to the beholder a 
shade of relation or sense. 

Succeeding reply, on the part of the Umbratile, 
divested itself of just a particle of pleasantry, not 
enough, however, to deny frame to a mental rejoinder 
not unlike the following : *' Good E of the Cabalistic 
Zodiac, or, better still. Ego of Philo, the matter of 
choice to be settled between you, is your servant, 
while impressionable, not at the same time knowledg- 
able as to optical delusions as these relate with eye, 
nerve-tract, tubercula quadrigemina, and even with 
that extreme retreat in the brain poetized by the 
ancients as the habitation of the soul, and materialized 
by the moderns as the seat of particles of sand." 

Naturally there came to mind remembrance of 
writing seen upon the plaster of the wall by the king 
of Babylon,* — the fatal pronouncement, ''Mene, Mene, 
Tekel, Upharsin," — as well memory of words heard 
by him of Tarsus, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou 

* "In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and 
wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the 
king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote." 



"SEEING WHATr 



187 



me?" Neither did the moment fail in bringing to 
mind that declaration by Alexandrians, that on three 
different occasions Plotinus found himself in company 
with the God. Still other things came to the Umbra- 
tile in shape of passing visions to be secured through 
hashish eating, through the use of opium, and con- 
cerning that less agreeable class of unreal realities 
familiar to a mania-a-potuist. 

. . . The experiences of a night are to be written 
out exactly as they occurred. Even Occultism fails to 
antagonize sleep. The Umbratile, after an hour or 
two, found the curious mastered by the somnolent. 
Now came a dream, not a vision. After the manner 
of a dream was beheld an oblong square showing three 
separated sprays of lilies. The drawing represents ac- 
curately what was seen : 



tolp*^ 



As the Umbratile looked wonderingly at this symbol, 
seeing as little meaning as with the preceding experi- 
ence, explanation projected itself as a Jack might 
spring from its box. The word was "Hypostases," 
and the association implied that the separate sprays or 
groups stood for the three parts of which a man is con- 
stituted, namely. Matter, Ego, Holy Ghost ; that it is 
left with men which they will most cultivate, and thus 
become most like unto, — that is, whether they will be 
Material, Selfish, or Godly. 



I as SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

In his dream the Urabratile fixed his gaze ear- 
nestly — it may have been by accident, or it may have 
been out of intuition — on the spray representing the 
Holy Ghost. As he continued to look this developed 
little by little into a fulness of bloom which trans- 
formed the flower into a size and whiteness such as he 
had never before beheld. The other two sprays with- 
ered and shrunk away correspondingly. 

. . . When the morning came the Umbratile wrote 
down that, in a dream, he had learned the meaning of 
differences which characterize men, and as well that he 
had been given the secret of creating differences. 

But when the morning came, nothing of the 

meaning of the couplet was seen by the Umbratile, 
nor for a whole year afterwards. 



THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. 

Day, night, the day again ; 
Yesterday, to-morrow, eternally the same. 

But when a year had passed the same some- 
thing that had brought the couplet brought explana- 
tion. The manner of the bringing was possessed here, 
as in the preceding illustration, of suddenness and ful- 
ness. This time the form was that of a syllogism, — a 
syllogism so absolutely undeniable and irrefutable in 



THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. 



189 



premises and conclusion as it is accepted by the Um- 
bratile, that, if it be broken or breakable, one life at 
least will give itself up as deadness and failure. 

Here is the syllogism. Let none but the great 
scholars or the divine men assume that a simple single 
reading gives understanding of it. The Umbratile 
reads it over every day. Every day it shows itself 
more and more plainly to him as the school of fate. 
Every day it shows more and more of the palimpsestic 
quality, having beneath its words other words. Here 
are the heaven, hell, life, death of the Umbratile. 

The syllogism : 

That which is perpetual is Eternal. 

Now, is perpetual. 

Conclusion : 

Eternal and Now are one. 

No duty, no responsibility lying apart from a 

Now that is. Present one with the ever-existing 
eternity ; present always present ; now an eternal now. 

All that is seeable, all that is doable, all that is 

requirable lying immediately with and around a Now 
that is. — Yesterday gone; to-morrow not come; a 
thousand years back gone j a thousand years hence not 
come. 

— — Can a man work or think in any yesterday? 
Can he work or think in any to-morrow that is with- 
out existence ? Certitude indeed ! Duty plain. Ar- 
canum openness. Nothing to concern, nothing to 
understand but what is directly at hand; the earthly 
at hand, hell at hand, heaven at hand. 

The Now being what it is. Being exactly what 

a man makes it ! Degraded senses seeing, tasting. 



ipo SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

smelling the cess-pools. Senses lifted up, feeling the 
touch of celestials ; hearing the music of Elysium. 

Summum bonum, the highest good. Man his own 
heaven maker and his own hell maker. Man his own 
lifter up and his own puller down. Man a maker and 
an unmaker. The relativity of good and evil under- 
stood and appreciated. 

Comprehending that the garden of the gods 

may not be separated from the cess-pools farther than 
the other side of a road. Apprehending that God, the 
Universal, is one with God the multitudinous; that he 
is one with the Divinity found residing in men. 

Just here news of the "death" of a near relative. 
What a misnomer to call that death which is simply 
metamorphosis ! Is the Umbratile to darken his shade 
into black by the putting on of crape ? Is he to bewail 
a worm passed into a butterfly? Is he to be oblivious 
when he looks on a locust-shell with a rent down its 
back? Rather let him put on white. Rather let him 
rejoice in presence of an invisible materialization that 
has made crooked fingers straight and has smoothed 
out a wrinkled skin. Who can fly when the means of 
movement lie with feet ? Who can sing the songs of 
the spheres when the voice lies in a rough windpipe ? 
Who can commune with angels when the stature holds 
on a level with men ? 

Has that which has been so long expected come 

at this particular time to an end of furnishing vivid 
illustration ? An hour ago the Umbratile and his dual 
stood looking down on a body that once was rounded 
and warm and full of motion ; now it is shrunken and 



THE WRITING UPON THE WALL, 191 

cold and empty of vitality. Remembrance carries 
back when there were beautiful white teeth, and eye- 
lids that never opened but to disclose love and smiles. 
There were refined dressings of the body, and there 
were dainty steps deficient in no figure of the dance. 

For years only few and straggling teeth. For 

years eyelids disclosing the shrunken orbs of a con- 
sumptive. For years steps too weary for aught but 
dragging from chair to bed. For years a body strug- 
gling to liberate the Ego within it. 

Liberation now accomplished. A heavy load gotten 
clear of. A chain broken. An immortal come to 
wings. An immortal come to new and fresh em- 
bodiment ; to celestial environment ; to voice un- 
roughened by windpipe j to lightness which floats 
with clouds. 

— — New position to be occupied ; new duties to be 
assumed. Position and duties in accord with Law 
which is one with Providence. Fitness for fresh life, 
adaptability to altered purposes. An Ego that has 
won for itself other planes and that goes higher. 

An Ego which is what it was, is, and will be. 

An Ego that has left fitting work for work still more 
fitting. An Ego that has worn out a body and that 
passes into other body. An Ego that looks out of the 
intangible ; itself seeing, itself unseen. 

Let windows be thrown widely open. Let flowers 
be scattered. Let music appeal to the bereaved in 
glorious anthem. Let steps which accompany the 
corpse tread to the measure of a dance song. 

Greetings ! not farewell, departed one. Departed, 
yet present. Gone into the eternity, staying in time. 



192 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



Seeing What ? — Seeing the practical application of 
the hypostases as it is to be trusted the reader sees it. 

First as to the dream. 

Difference between the muscles of a prize-fighter and 
•the God in Christ distinguished as residing solely with 
cultivation of different parts of a common hypostases ; 
all mystery taken away from religion ; cultivation of 
the religious as easy as the cultivation of muscle. 

Second, as to the vision. 

Here a culmination, an ending, that carries back to 
an unappreciated long-ago beginning as found in an 
old diary. 

Alas ! for much of what there is between ; 

Yet hail ! as to much of what there is between. 

How dog-eared is the dingy manuscript ! How 
scrawlingly the words are written ! How disregardful 
are the lines of everything save experiences ! Written 
more than forty years back. Forty years which have 
covered a marsh with ship-yards. Forty years which 
have killed off and buried the bodies of willow-strip- 
pers. Forty years which have turned cow-pastures 
into city streets, and which have made breaches in the 
church-yard wall, separating mouldering coffins with 
their ghastly contents from luxurious Pullman cars 
hurrying along their richly-endowed occupants, — hur- 
rying along the occupants ; where to ? to what place ? 
to what end ? Forty years ! forty years ! The old 
graveyard full, the old lanes obliterated, the old people 
gone. 

Alas! 

Let a copy of the diary be made exactly as it is 
found written; "To-day is a birthday; fifteen years 



THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. 



193 



old. Going aimlessly about a marsh which borders 
the * * * * just outside the low wall of the Swedes' 
burying-ground, nobody being in sight, I heard dis- 
tinctly a voice directly at my ear say, — here the com- 
mon individuality grasps the pen ; it is not self-re- 
specting nor independent enough to have repeated 
what was said at the marsh. ..." 

Upon succeeding pages appears the following : " I 
have been telling of the odd thing that happened down 
at the marsh yesterday. Mostly it is laughed at. 
Somebody said something of * imagination running 
away with wits.' This last hits it, I guess. Yet, how- 
ever and whatever it is, I did hear a voice, and I know 
that nobody was within sight. Associating this with 
other things, I may conclude that I am a trifle ofl" or 
odd. People are forever asking what it is I see as I 
lie under trees looking into the sky. Well, I see and I 
don't see. I surely never before heard a voice as yes- 
terday. The bell of the old church says to me what 
it doesn't say to other people; this I am sure of. I 
am afraid of ghosts, but to save a soul I can't stay away 
from vaults when they are to be opened. I should 
like of all things — that is, if the thing were over — to 
have the experience of having been locked in a vault 
over night along with bodies and coffins." 

"... What a curious story is that I read last night 
about the old German Rosenkreuz ! I take to it. It 
is exactly the kind of thing that seems to fit me. Let 
me see : it was night before last, and not last night, 
that I read the story. Wonder if it could have any- 
thing to do with the voice? Why not this a ghost- 
voice, having something to say to me ? It is said^ 
I « 17 



194 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

everybody says — that spirits are to be met by dozens 

in the church-lane about midnight. I never met one 

myself; but why not? 

******* 

"I have gone over again, crudely, however, I im- 
agine, that story of the Rosicrucians, and I have deter- 
mined to be one myself. It is not making money out 
of lead, which I find to be the meaning of the Philoso- 
pher's stone, that I care about, but these people seem 
to me to have got hold of some high thing which no- 
body that I know knows anything about. Here every- 
body is at work all the time, ship-building, or fitting 
out the whalers, or in the foundries, or upon the farms 
around the town. My own way of wandering about, 
shirking the dulness of school, sleeping on the shady 
side of walls, fishing the ditches, or helping, without 
pay, at willow-stripping in the season, — well, I like it, 
and I don't care. I guess it's a kind of natural start 
in this Rosicrucianism. The old graveyard is crowded 
with dead people. Some of the tombstones must have 
cost a thousand dollars, and some of the old sunk-in 
graves are not worth more than about ten cents, yet 
the bodies seem to lie as comfortably with the one kind 
as with the other. I think there must be something 
better for some people, anyhow, than foundries and 
whalers and stone-quarrying, and all that kind of thing, 
and I am going to look into the matter. 

" I like, too, to pray. I am praying all the time. I 
pray lying under the walls, and by the side of the 
tree- roots, and the livelong day when fishing the ditches. 
Yet I don't like the praying at the meeting-houses; 
there's too much begging about it. I wonder if a boy 



THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. 195 

couldn't make a Spiritus Sanctus for himself. I know 
every cave and rock and deep place among the trees 
about the * * * for five miles beyond where 
its waters join the * * * near the old church. 
Maybe place is no matter, however. I feel myself full 
to the lips and running over with a glory that seems 
not more inside than outside of me. I bubble over 
with the happiness of living. I wish that I could spend 
the whole of a very long life dreaming by the side of 
the walls, fishing the ditches, and peeling willow 
wands." 

4^ *J* •!* *l* *f* 1* •!• 

The next extract to be made that relates with the 
present epistle is dated ten years later. The interim 
is remembered by the now Umbratile dual as a dis- 
agreeable nightmare. Every opportunity permitted to 
become classical in learning ; no teacher found power- 
ful or enthused enough to compel or to invite to a life 
outside of self; a nightmare only, however, because of 
missed advantages. Fool things permitted to delay 
progress. The coming to consciousness of indwelling 
devils, yet not strangling them while they were little. 
Shifting from meditation to trade, and from trade 
back to meditation. Dazed by the glamour of dollars. 
Like unto a fly, getting one's legs caught in molasses. 
Making scars which show more and more with age, 
and which are apt to break out. Going not at all 
straightforward, but scenting about the fleshpots. 

Not all contrariwise, however. A profession secured 
which marks the beginning of a new start ; a new start 
never interfered with save as delays are compelled by 
breaking out of the scars, and as obstacles are found 



1^6 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

put in the way by devils grown big. Not, however, 
become oblivious to the glory that the world puts 
on. Still a constant utterer of prayers. Still a tryer 
of wings, — which do not bear up, however, as once 
they did. 

The extract is exactly as follows : " I am writing 
this in a country inn, where I am staying for the night. 
On the afternoon of this day I had stolen away from 
the disquieting influences of the town, being weary, 
discomforted, and restless; and was lying, after the 
fashion of boy-times, stretched full-length upon the 
sands of a cove bordering the * * * River, the 
place being not very far from * * * on the op- 
posite side, when suddenly I was startled into rap- 
turous ecstasy by hearing such music as I did not im- 
agine could exist for the entrancing of human ears. 
The song, while familiar, was at the same time won- 
drously new, and seemed to be sung by a choir of 
voices somersaulting in the air. Before me was a wide 
and long stretch of the stream, free from boat or sight 
of life of any kind ; while behind and below and above 
unshaded fields were witness to the absence of human 
beings. Full fifteen minutes the song went on in the 
air. Full fifteen minutes lay I captivated, straining 
now the sense of hearing to catch a faint sound losing 
itself in an illimitable distance, a moment later crowd- 
ing with open palms the ear-drums to keep a mighty 
roll and swell of volume from crushing them in. 

*' The day has been as a revelation and a revolution. 
Let me put down, for sweet remembrance and for 
delectation, what to-night I am thinking and feeling. 
The voice of the marsh is back in my ears. Portals 



THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. i^^ 

have been again opened. Ah, sharpened ears and 
sharpening eyes ! Is it any wonder that I cannot keep 
still ? — that I am turning hastily and continuously, ex- 
pecting strange sights ? What unwisdom is it to con- 
found essence with instrument ! How different, as 
this day I have been permitted to see, are environment 
and a thing environed ! Hereafter can harp and soft 
viol be to me nothing apart from media of materializa- 
tion, affording to unspiritualized ears relation with 
spiritualized belongings. I distinguish, never to for- 
get, melody from instrument. 

*' No dream ! A watch looked at counting the passing 
time. — ^Yet what if it were a dream? What difference 
would this make, as separability of melody and instru- 
ment has been demonstrated ? Was not music heard ? 
Was not that character of instrument absent which is 
the ordinary means of relation with human ears? I 
know well that there are two sides to an inference. 
The happy side to me to-night is that my Ego has 
heard independent of its ordinary sense. If it be true 
that things exist in the universal independent of man's 
senses, then it follows that these things are to remain 
forever hidden in the darkness, as man's knowledge of 
them is concerned ; otherwise. Ego may receive inde- 
pendent of its ordinary senses as media. For the first 
time I comprehend that all music heard before this of 
the afternoon's experience has been imitation effected 
by use of reeds, or wire, or other ingenious contrivance. 
Certainly, the experience renders irrefutable the fact 
that a state can exist, let it be called hallucina- 
tion, aural derangement, or dream, or what else, in 
which a new world is opened within an old one and 
17* 



198 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

music is recognized to be reality apart from the manner 
familiar to every-day life. 

*' Not unfamiliar with the 'tinnitus aurium,' I am 
unable to find here explanation of what has been 
heard. I seek freely and fully, but ' tinnitus' does 
not account for refinement in variations of notes, as 
has been enjoyed. I am the happier in that I find 
myself unable to approach an explanation. My state 
of mind for the hour is, that whatever this rapture 
mean, whether health, disease, illumination, darkness, 
the condition is heavenly, delicious, and I do not 
want the paradise disturbed. I assume that I have 
been favored to hear, through some uncommon acci- 
dent, strains truly celestial, not earthly music, which 
is microscopically imitative, as pronounced by Rosi- 
crucianism. There is certainly not less confusion in 
explaining this phenomenon through the ' tinnitus' 
than there is in recognizing it to have originated, as 
taught by learned masters of the Mystic sect, out of 
impact upon lines or tracks existing in relation with the 
transit of planetary bodies as these lines, or tracks, or 
chords have been crossed and acted on by sun-rays. 

" This last, transcendentally explanatory of the exist- 
ence of music, propounded by the Illuminati as filling 
the world ; bearable, however, by a dematerialized ear 
only, save in such rare instances as this recorded. Is 
it not told of John that he beheld seven candlesticks, 
and that he heard a voice, and is not the truthfulness 
of this accepted by a church that pronounces its judg- 
ments infallible ? Are not all Christians bound to 
believe that Jeremiah was commanded by a mystical 
voice out of the silence, and is it not heresy to doubt 



THE WRITING UPON THE WALL. 199 

the reality of a voice which called Samuel? These 
things are to-day become perfectly plain to me. Do I 
need tradition or church or faith to verify or to con- 
fuse? Knowing is knowing. Whatever learning or 
enlarged experience shall have to teach in the future 
of such things, I accept that there is a relation of es- 
sence with essence which is not at all relation through 
intermediate matter. 

** Yet, even in this hour of ecstatic consolation, 

I may not be oblivious to thoughts that have often 
enough recurred as to a probable insanity, temporary 
or otherwise, of characters, be they biblical or others, 
who hear voices and see sights of occult character. 
To-night it is given me to see the matter in a different 
light. Ordinarily the strength and the sight and the 
perceptions of men pursue the course of a sluggish 
level: certain weights are liftable, certain adjacent 
things are seeable, certain character of thoughts are 
thinkable. Let anger arouse men, or let the stimulus 
of preliminary ether-anaesthesia be directed to the 
muscles, and weakness is seen possessed of reserved 
strength deemed of impossible existence by an ob- 
server. The lifting of an interposed cloud has shown 
often enough to a passing traveller scenes never before 
beheld or dreamed of as existing. It has been wisely 
taught by Neo-platonists, and is truth known to every 
godly human, that prayer, meditation, and harmony 
are means creative of higher and broader views than 
those associated with the grazing propensity. I am 
listening to a mental voice which is asking as to the 
meaning of the inspired hours of the poets, and as to 
unconstructed edifices beheld in the mirror of the 



200 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

mind by the architects. I am recalling what myself 
have seen in sky-ascending smoke starting out of burn- 
ing brush-heaps. There come back to me pictures 
beheld in glowing western clouds. I have in memory 
lessons pumped into my brain from plashing brooks 
and out of long-rolling sea-waves. 

1 say to myself, in doubt as to being under- 
stood, What is for self let it remain with self; the veil 
of Isis down, the veil of Isis up. It is for him to com- 
prehend who is able to apprehend. 

Ad Interim. — Handling maggots where pearls were 
to be strung ! Life reached to the years of threescore 
in number showing body cultivated out of all contrast 
to Ego and Soul. Higher sacrificed to lower. Query ? 
Things being different, would appreciation of contrast 
exist as it does to-day ? Remembrance of words and 
songs heard forty years back, — words and songs hold- 
ing themselves occult until education has revealed 
their meaning. Alas ! for a teacher forty years back ! 
Perhaps not ! Count forty, or forty hundred, years 
in contrast with Eternity as existing with the Now. 
Every minute a beginning. Every minute an end- 
ing. Every minute the beginning of a new ending. 
Ending and beginning one. The Zuricher is right: 
**Men do not know themselves, and therefore they 
do not understand the things that are in their inner 
world." 

Now ONE WITH Perpetual, Perpetual one with 
Eternal. — Truth being ever the same, it must be ever 
new. Reference is to be made to passages in the book 



SEEING THE ALL, 201 

" Man and his World," which book, being, so to speak, 
a first volume to the present one, invites relation. 

Consider, Cebes ! Viewing the universe as a bound- 
less circumference, which undoubtedly it is, how im- 
possible is it that centre could be elsewhere than alike 
anywhere and everywhere, or, conversely, that it should 
be nowhere ! Again : Defining Eternity as represent- 
ing absence of beginning or ending, is this else than 
deciding it an eternal Now ? 

You mean, Protagoras, that if a thing have neither be- 
ginning nor ending it is necessarily without movement ? 

Ask yourself, Cebes, if this be not its only possibility. 
I mean exactly what I say. There has not been, nor 
can there be, any term, period, or existence that is 
without a state that has no without, or that is not within 
a state where there is nothing but within. Consider: 
We have divisions or measurements which are called 
hours of the day, and others denominated weeks and 
months, and still others named years, but what are 
these save arbitrary distinctions, inherent in a com- 
mon thing, made by men for sake of convenience? 
A watch the hands of which do not move is equally 
right with a running one three times in twenty- four 
hours, and this it would continue to be so long as a 
single man might be upon the earth to look at its face. 

I think I catch the idea ; you mean, Protagoras, 
that time being Now, eternity cannot be anywhere else, 
for the reason that there is no anywhere else? 

Look at it after still another manner, Cebes. Eter- 
nity having as its condition neither beginning nor 
ending, does it not necessarily follow that everything 
is within, or between, this no-beginning and no-ending ? 



202 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

By the gods, Protagoras, you declare and show that 
we are now in eternity ! 

The thing declares and shows itself, Cebes. As- 
suredly we are now in eternity. Two thousand years 
ago we were in eternity. We shall be in eternity ever- 
more, for the reason that there is nowhere else to be. 

What strange, yet apparently irrefutable, thing is 
this you are propounding ? Truly you do not fail to 
recognize in the showing of the argument life and 
living going on forever as these now are; that is, 
man changing into nothing else ? 

Whist, Cebes ! he may have wings and fly, or he 
may be without legs and run. Does not a man retro- 
grade or advance ? 

I mean that he does not, in any individual sense, 
turn into something else. 

Into an Angel, would you say, Cebes ? Why, Soc- 
rates, according to the telling, has shown how he may 
metamorphose into the God. For myself, I have seen 
beneficent seraphs and malignant devils sitting, in the 
shape of men, on the common seats of a circus. 

THE CORNER-STONE IS NOW. 
To emphasize it, Cebes, let us imagine a pyramid 
millions of times broader and higher and older than that 
of Cheops, and let us imagine the stone-cutting instru- 
ments of all the earth made into one, and in turn let 
us imagine this instrument forever engaged in cutting 
and deepening a line reading 

"AN ETERNAL NOW." 
This, Cebes, may faintly express idea of the stupendous 
significance of the line as it relates with a man's under- 



SEEING THE ALL, 



203 



Standing of himself, and of his relation with the Uni- 
versal. In application of Oneness as to Now and 
Eternity is disappearance of confusions of all kinds, 
together with all mysteries. What could remain to 
confound, when highest height and lowest depth and 
greatest length and widest breadth are one with the 
man standing in their midst ?* Here is no to-morrow 
to consider, no yesterday to perplex. Here is Oracle 
with voice ever unmuffled. Here God and devil and 
heaven and hell are one with a man's self. Attained 
to understanding of this oneness of Now and Eternity, 
and of the oneness of man's hypostases with the hypos- 
tases of the Universal, how insignificant and unim- 
portant become the disputes of philosophers and the 
diversities of systems ! Does not even the simple man 
comprehend that an outside implies inside, or, in turn, 
inside may not exist separated from outside ? Seeing 
Now to be one with Eternity, and the hypostases of 
man to be one with the hypostases of the Universal, is 
seeing the all. 

Concerning this Eternal Now, Protagoras. 

It, and its relations, alone remain to be considered. 
But how say you, Cebes? If a man is not in an 
Eternal Now, are we to declare that he is not in it ? 

It would not be easy to say anything else. 

What as to Consciousness ? Would you say that if 
a man is unconscious he is not conscious ? 

This, truly. 

And would you say, reversing this, that a man being 
conscious he is not unconscious ? 

* See Idealism : " Man and his World." 



204 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Nothing else is to be said. 

How as to oneness of Consciousness and Uncon- 
sciousness with being or not being? 

Assuredly Consciousness is the same as *'to be," 
while Unconsciousness is one with ** not to be.** 

Such being the case, immortality is to be declared 
one with continuous consciousness ? 

Necessarily this. 

And we may not say that Consciousness exists else- 
where than with Consciousness ? 

It would be impossible for it to exist save in itself. 

How is it just now with Cebes ? is he conscious ? 

We have agreed that Ego and Consciousness are 
identical, and certainly Cebes is Ego. 

Then, if a consciousness which is one with Cebes 
is immortal, that is, if Cebes is immortal by reason of 
being a conscious existence, this consciousness is to 
ll continue unbroken ? 

^^' Assuredly this. 

What continues unbroken is That which Cebes knows 
as himself? in other words, what continues unbroken 
is a That which now is ? 

This, Protagoras, otherwise there is no present Cebes. 

We are, then, agreed that unconsciousness is the 
reverse of consciousness, the one being identical with 
non-existence, the other identical with existence? 

Quite agreed. 

Turning this around, I am to say that we are one 
in a conclusion that Consciousness is immortal by reason 
of its being one with Ego, which Ego is an Entity, or 
simple, the entities, or simples, being pure existences, 
consequently immortal ? 



SEEING THE ALL. 205 

In truth, Protagoras, the argument must be held 
perfect, if doubt is entirely absent as regards the per- 
sistent nature of an entity. 

Are we, then, to opine that doubt is not absent from 
Cebes? 

Pardon, Protagoras,- it is just away. I had momen- 
tarily overlooked the noumenal nature of the parts 
composing the hypostases. 

To be wanting in appreciation and understanding 
of the noumena is indeed one with finding nothing in 
the argument of the hypostases. 

But you esteem argument existing in the hypostases 
unbreakable ? 

To break it is one with denying hunger when one is 
hungry, consciousness when consciousness is present, 
and God when the construction and rhythm of the 
world are looked at. 

Might it not indeed be said, Protagoras, that proof of 
it lies with the Self that finds itself asking after proof? 

Put it as you please, Cebes, Yourself holds it all. 
Shall we go on ? 

I beg that unnecessary interruption be pardoned. 

Let us, then, put the things together. Cebes exists. 
He exists now. Cebes is Ego. Ego is a simple. 
Simple is immortal. Cebes is immortal by reason of 
being a simple. Immortal is one with unbroken ex- 
istence. Unbroken existence is not possibly else than 
continuous existence. Ergo, Now and Eternity are one. 

I fear, Protagoras, you will scarcely excuse me, but 
question here offers. Eternity and Now accepted as 
one, what is gained in replacing a familiar with an 
unfamiliar term ? 

18 



■I 



2o6 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Your last more than excuses the questions put to- 
gether. The word Eternity has been made the saddest 
misnomer of language. It is at one and the same 
time the bugaboo, the land of promise, the will-o'- 
the-wisp, and the cheat of mankind. 

" Man never is, but always to be blest." 

In like manner, he never is, but always to be curst. 
Now, there not being anything else, or time, or space, 
save what now is, man is to recognize that he joys or 
cheats himself always and forever as he relates with a 
Now that is with him. This he may not get away 
from. Heed, Cebes ! Compelled to recognize the 
oneness of Eternity and Now, could it be otherwise 
than that heaven and hell are with That which alone is ? 
Might it as well be otherwise than that heaven, or the 
absence of it, is anything or any place save as it is one 
with the presence or absence of God in the hypostases ? 
for surely, as has been before considered, presence 
of God is identical with existence of heaven. The 
sprays, Cebes, are become my Zeus, my Christ, my 
Gautama, my Mencius, my Confucius, my Mahomet, 
my all of the philosophers and systems of philosophy, 
my entire and sole religion, my whole knowledge of 
pain and pleasure, my bad genius in times of tempta- 
tion, and my good daemon in hours of succor; in a 
word, this dream of a modern is become my sole 
lifter-up and puller-down. Heed closely, Cebes: 
temptation is with Matter; Salvation is with Soul. 
Ego is chooser. To yield to Matter is to descend ; 
to cling by Soul is to ascend. 



THINGS SAID OVER 



IN 



OTHER WORDS. 



207 



A ROSICRUCIAN. 

Getting farther and farther away from water until 
one famishes is illustrative of getting farther and farther 
away from the God until practically he is lost to us. 

A friend from whom I have just parted, and with 
whom the afternoon has been spent wandering by the 
side of a creek that is a favorite place of resort with 
both, is a Rosicrucian of the order known as Illuminates, 
or Illuminati. It is not, however, by the singular of 
such word that he names himself. Indeed, as just here 
the thought is in my mind, I am confident that in the 
course of our fairly long intercourse it has not been 
used between us. To himself he is simply a doctor out 
of harness ; to me he is a man well advanced in years, 
who is known as having spent a life of large and prom- 
inent usefulness by giving the benefits existing with 
great learning to those found standing in need of them. 
As a practitioner and teacher of medicine, fifty years 
of his life belong to the history of his profession. The 
present time is his own — and, happily, mine. 

I introduce my fellow-loiterer and dreamer of the 
creek-side as a Rosicrucian of the Illuminate order 
because of his being what he is, he being, in fact, 
about the only one comfortably known to me in this 
unrestful world who occupies such a plane. 

With men of the two other orders of the Rosicrucians, 
the Alchemists and the Immortals, I possess large ac- 
quaintance. The first are the money-changers; among 
1 8* 209 



2IO SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

these being at the lowest point of the scale the venial 
politician, and at the other the sturdy farmer who 
sees in his waving corn never anything but the price 
of its grains. The immortals find free representation 
among the professionals. Medicine holds a multi- 
tude; workers with crucibles and alembics not yet ar- 
rived at inductions led to by the hypostases. 

The way from mine to the Illuminate's house is 
down a short and well-kept lane, the entrances of the 
two places so almost directly facing that in the fall 
and winter when the leaves are fallen it is no difficult 
matter to signal across the intervening distance invita- 
tion for a stroll, an invitation which, whether of the 
winter or the summer time, is commonly sure of a 
mutually acceptable response. 

Considering my friend, I find familiar definition for 
an Illuminate in "^ man who lives in the light of 
Apprehension^ He is in every way above a wheaten 
loaf, although, by reason of having begun life as a 
member of the alchemical class and continued it for 
many years as an immortal, some wealth, which is the 
common meaning of these two manners of living, has 
been brought out of the former condition. 

In town the coat worn was of broadcloth; it was 
necessary to consider, in the wearing, storm and dust. 
"Toggery" is his word for the kind of dress in which 
he now goes about. Memory contrasts, much to a 
present credit, the broadcloth and the toggery. Here 
is never hesitation in pushing through a mass of bram- 
bles or fording the creek. Here is never a day that 
has too much of rain or too much of snow in it ; dust 
is matter of microscopical interest. 



A ROSICRUCIAN. 211 

My friend is a man holding so much in himself that 
without difficulty I find in him almost anything of 
which I stand in need : equally well does he fix a worn 
water-spigot or turn a telescope on Mars. Only the 
day before yesterday, walking with him through a strip 
of wood that borders one side of the village, mj sur- 
gery might have been supplied for a full week at the 
simple cost of stooping. — Alas ! so much that is see- 
able remaining unseen ! One of my unspoken names 
for my friend is " Emmetrope," — this in the sense 
that he sees so large meaning in things showing nothing 
to eyes in general. A leaf plucked from any of the 
many bushes of his garden he opens and turns to the 
extent of a volume. — *' So much at hand," says my 
friend to me without opening his lips. ** So little at 
hand," repeat I, when in the garden ; I telling I what 
a different thing a garden is to him who knows botany 
and to him who does not know it. 

To-day, just returned from a trip to a distant part 
of the country, I am invited, in a call on my friend, to 
a seat in '^ Boffin's bower." This bower is home-made, 
consisting of four unpainted posts supporting a grape- 
vine designed to shade a rustic seat, and as well an 
aquarium about two feet by four constructed out of 
bricks and cement upon the ground. Boffin's bower 
is my friend's pulpit. To-day his text was the aphis. 
*' To tell a gardener," said he, "that the devil goeth 
about like an eating aphis, is to get an idea into his 
head possessed of a much more practical significance 
than that which he would obtain from being told that 
the devil goeth about like a roaring lion." The text is 
a sermon in itself. Lions in the localities of the gardens 



212 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

are neither of trouble nor inconvenience, met with, as 
they are, only behind the bars of a menagerie-cage. 
An aphis, on the contrary, is one of millions. The 
growth of a summer is destroyed by him in the hours 
of a day. Watch and pray, the latter word meaning 
work, is the necessity when he is about. "Apropos," 
said my friend, "the cats have got at my frogs." 
(The tank is the home of his batrachians.) The inci- 
dent aroused thoughts on the part of both of us as to the 
seeming mercilessness of Providence. " Seeming is 
the word," said my friend j "this not being the case, 
God would be devil. My happy frogs, whose croaks 
are music, singing me nightly to sleep, are left without 
protection either as to wit or eyes as defence is against 
cats." "And the cats," I suggested, " are without the 
shadow of a chance against the shot-gun of a boy." 
"True, true," was the rejoinder; *'and the boy has 
no better show, outside the doctor, against diphtheria 
or scarlet fever than the cats have against his gun." 
" Your faith is not extensive,' ' I queried, " as to a special 
Providence always about with open eyes and ears?" 
"Granted," he said, "as to the open eyes and ears; 
the heart is of stone." "Meaning by this," I pro- 
posed, "that little attention is given to what is seen 
or heard ?" " Meaning," he replied, " that to talk of 
special Providence as special Providence is commonly 
understood in the way of enjoining dependence on it 
is not a whit more sensible than entreating a cat to 
show mercy to a bull-frog." " It would be better," I 
suggested, " to teach the frog, if that be possible, to 
sun himself mid-stream on a log, out of understanding 
that a cat would not wet its paws to get at him ?" " It 



A ROSICRUCIAN, 213 

would be best," he replied, "if it were not for the 
big bird overhead, watching its chance for a supper." 
"The frog might stay at the bottom of his ditch," 
I suggested. "If it were not," he rejoined, "for the 
eel concealed in the mud." 

"Is it not unaccountable," continued my friend, 
" that a doctrine like this of special Providence, which 
is so exactly the opposite of fact as it exists, and as 
well so contrary to the dignity and good of man, can 
continue in the face of the God's practical denial of it 
on every side?" 

"I am reminded," I replied, " of an incident occur- 
ring long ago, where I let a house and garden to an im- 
poverished preacher with view to helping him along by 
boarding out the rent. It happened that I had bough*- 
the garden of a millionaire bank president, who him- 
self, using wheelbarrow and spade, had produced such 
richness that slightest tillage of the ground met with 
response not unjustly to be likened to the famous 
draught of fishes where a net was put down at the 
right time and place. Before the tenant came I had 
ploughed and planted the garden, and it was turned 
over to him with the single requirement existing of 
keeping down weeds. That season my garden was a 
dead failure. Crisp radishes, always before so plentiful, 
were not found on the morning plates. There were no 
refreshing salads for dinner. Berries were wanting as 
absolutely as if the vines had taken up root and de- 
camped. Even the tomato, that most persistent and 
overwhelming of vegetables, showed but an infrequent 
specimen. In short, there was nothing, — nothing but 
weeds. My tenant would not hoe, but he made up for 



/ 



214 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

the shortcoming by invocations and supplications to 
Providence, with which he favored the sitters about the 
table. Words were his antitheses to weeds. 

" One day, utterly weary of the man's shiftlessness, I 
asked if the intention of the prayers was to wheedle the 
God into going to the barn for the hoe, as with lack 
of use of that instrument lay our default as to the 
things prayed for. The reply was a look absolutely 
vacant as to understanding. Not discouraged, I went 
on to say that as the garden had given overflowingly to 
the bank president, who, so far as I knew, never prayed, 
and the same to me, whose prayers were prayers in the 
sense alone of thank-offerings for the abundant bless- 
ings found at command of a hoe, a conclusion forced 
itself that the God was against him. 

** The preacher awakened to the situation. * Against 
me, his servant ?' he asked, with the largest of interro- 
gation-marks. 

"* Against something, certainly,' I replied, * since 
whereas formerly there were plenty of vegetables there 
are now none.' 

'* The word was taken up by a farmer who happened 
to be a diner at the table that day, and whose opinion 
of the preacher's educated sense was not exalted. 
* You don't have,' he said, * if you don't hoe: the 
something is with the hoe, I guess.' 

" * Do you mean,' asked the preacher, * to imply that 
asking God for blessings is unprofitable ?' 

"*Not exactly that,' responded the farmer; *but 
my own prayers I keep for night, not wasting time on 
getting out of bed in the morning, having found out 
long ago that half an hour with a hoe while the dew is 



A ROSICRUCIAN, 



215 



on the ground is quite equal to a couple of hours after 
the sun is up.' 

*'*And you trust in the arm of flesh?' asked the 
preacher. 

** * In that and the hoe,' said the farmer, * for I find 
that if I don't get up and go at it no weeding gets done. 
I find, too, something else,' he said, *and here my 
prayers come in. A radish-seed and a trifle of ground 
properly put together bring a radish. The thing is the 
same as to everything about my farm. Nothing lacks 
or lags. The matter seems to be for each thing to do 
its part : the seed to do its part, the ground to do its 
part, rain to do its part, sun to do its part, me to do 
my part. Seeing this as I am about the fields all day, 
I am so overwhelmed by the expressions of the good- 
ness and presence of Providence that by the time night 
comes I have got beyond words. What ! expect seed 
and ground and rain and sun to do their part, and I 
loaf. No, no ! I don't come to that.' 

*' * What do you mean by loafing?' asked the preacher, 
with an expression that implied dissatisfaction with the 
drift of the talk. 

'* * To speak plainly and not mince the thing,* said 
the farmer, ' I mean praying over short commons.' 

** The preacher was indignant, and expressed the 
indignation by rolling his eyes upward. What he said 
was, * He letteth the tares grow up with the wheat.' 

" * He does, indeed,' said the farmer j * but for my- 
self, I don't save up for him the trouble of separating 
the two at harvest-time.' 

** *Be careful,' said the preacher, ' that you are not 
saving up damnation for the harvest-time.' 



2i6 SFIRITUS SANCTUS. 

" * What !* replied the farmer, his face flushed with 
disgust or anger, as the case may have been, * damna- 
tion for understanding and obeying God as to his laws? 
damnation for not whining like a boy instead of work- 
ing like a man ? damnation for not begging when 
plenty needs alone the reaching out of a hand ? All 
right; let me be d ' " 

There was just here quick interruption of the recital, 
as I was giving it to my Rosicrucian friend, by a woman 
who came rushing into the bower begging the doctor 
for God's sake to come quick to her child, who had 
eaten belladonna berries. 

" Go back home, good woman," said the doctor in 
the quietest tone of voice, " and mix up and give your 
child a teaspoonful of mustard in a goblet of warm 
water. I will follow in good time." 

"But, doctor, doctor!" cried the woman, "for 
God's sake, the child is poisoned !" 

" I will come right away," said my friend. 

Walking towards the woman's house, the doctor said 
to me, " The God hears, and comes right away." 

"The woman would not understand this last," I 
hinted. 

" In turn," said my friend, " we are not, as doctors, 
mindful of it as it becomes our office to be. What is 
a doctor but an almoner of the God ? being the mercy 
of the God as he represents this mercy. The lauda- 
num here carried is the certain salvation of the poi- 
soned child." 

"True," I said, "the doctor is here instrument of 
response by reason of a medicine furnished him by 
Providence." 



A ROSICRUCIAN. 21 7 

"Understanding of the medicine, to intervene,** 
suggested ray friend, ** that the antidote shall not 
prove worse than the poison." 

** No doctor being at hand," I replied, *' or a doctor 
not knowing to the degree of antidotal significance 
between laudanum and belladonna, occasion would 
quickly exist in the present instance to arraign Provi- 
dence as to a dispensation beyond finding out." 

"The mother consoled on the funereal occasion," 
suggested my friend, " with the significance of a special 
mercy which Providence has gone out of his way to 
confer on her in taking the child up into heaven as in- 
ducement for her to follow." 

"The whole thing lying with belladonna berries or 
too much laudanum?" I queried. 

" With what else?" asked the doctor. 

" How perfect the law !" I acquiesced. " Providence 
never deaf but as a human ear refuses to hear, but as 
a hand refuses to stretch itself out, or as looking into 
things and finding out about them are denied their 
meaning." 

"Ears," soliloquized my friend, taking up uncon- 
sciously my thought, " that have come to understand- 
ing of the language of entreaty, and hands that know 
how to do what is required to be done." 

"This, necessarily," I responded. "The child is 
to be restored to the mother's arms by reason of the 
God's prescience that provided against such emergen- 
cies before child or mother was born." 

" Exactly," said the doctor : " the belladonna bush 
on one side of a piece of ground, and the opium plant 
on the other." 

K 19 



2i8 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

** To-night," I said, " as the mother cuddles the child 
safely to her breast her voice will go out in reverent 
prayer to the God for the preservation of her babe : 
there will be no thought of the doctor." 

"And why should there be thought of the doctor?*' 
asked he. **Is the doctor anything but a carrier? 
Did a doctor create the opium plant ? Does a doctor 
knit the broken limb whose fragments he lays in appo- 
sition ? The mother has her child by reason of the 
opium plant. Her reverence should indeed go out to 
him who put the virtue of a present salvation in the 
plant." 

**The unthinking," I suggested, "would not un- 
likely fault the existence of belladonna." 

"Unthinking indeed," responded the doctor, "for 
had the poisoning here been of opium it would have 
required the belladonna to antagonize it." 

" Truly great and wonderful are the works of God," 
I quoted. 

"So great and wonderful," responded my friend, 
"that induction demonstrates the absence of a single 
weak or imperfect factor in the whole of the Universal." 

"But the way to salvation," I suggested, "is after 
its manner as the way to getting belladonna berries 
out of a stomach is after its manner." 

"For ourselves," said the Rosicrucian, "we have 
no occasion to consider either." 

The short distance between the bower and the 
woman's house had been passed over during the few 
moments of conversation. The door stood open, and 
we entered. **The God is within," said the doctor, 
as the door closed. 



A ROSICRUCIAN. 219 

A very little while sufficed for the administration of 
the antidote. **Out of ignorance of law," continued 
the doctor, as coming out of the house he walked part 
way home with me, **the gracious God gets credited 
with the maiignancy of Satan. You are right as to the 
unthinking. Had a funeral occurred by reason of our 
mutual absence from home, the sermon would have had 
as its text * The ways of Providence are beyond finding 
ouii whereas the mysterious way was nothing more than 
a stomach that needed to be relieved of a few bella- 
donna berries." 

** *Lead us not into temptation,' " I suggested, *'is 
akin with the belladonna and opium. I should as soon 
think of the God scattering about the poisons bella- 
donna and opium with view to trapping children and 
unwary adults, as associate with his unspeakable gran- 
deur and mercy idea of a leader into temptation." 

"The thing," said the doctor, '* savors too much 
of the absurd to command attention. There is igno- 
rance as to translation of a passage, or there was an 
ear that did not hear very well." 

" Change of a few letters in the light of the hypos- 
taseSy^ I said, '*is found to afford absolute correction: 
■ — leave, instead of lead ; leave us not in temptation. 
Temptation is of matter, Salvation is of Soul. Such 
lesson cannot be too frequently scanned. Turning 
toward or turning from, is being led into temptation 
or being not left in temptation ; the difference is great. 
Self is holder of an only ear that replies to prayer to be 
helped in temptation as in other trouble, self as to the 
individual or as to a fellow individual. Providence is 
stone-deaf taken out of his manner. This manner is 



220 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

with the hypostases. It is a sad thing to find out, until 
it is fully found out, that the Providence of the Ignorant 
is dead ; more truly, that he never lived. This denies 
miracles. It denies everything but law. Providence 
being elsewhere than in law. Providence is without 
mercy. No special Providence exists upon earth. Law 
is one in its application everywhere and to every person. 
To do is to have. To leave undone is to lack. Not 
knowing how to do, or not having strength to do, fur- 
nishes no excuse to law ; the lacking one goes under ; 
this whether as to a poisoned child or as to a consump- 
tive widow stitching out the remnant of a life. What 
also finds no excuse, as * state of mind' is concerned, 
and this to its extent perhaps forever and forever, is for 
physician to hold back the opium from the poisoned 
child, or for Wealth to deny heed to the widow's 
need." 

"Ah ! how we should sink to the earth in despair,'* 
interrupted my friend, " if you were not wrong just 
here ! Time that heals the broken bone effaces little 
by little the stains of offence, thus forever and forever 
restoring lost purity." 

** Truly it is like the God, as the lesson lies with all 
nature," I agree. 

"For all that," said the doctor, " how mean we are 
to keep on forever redirtying our faces and holding 
them up for fresh washing ! The stains of offence are 
not so much with doing as with not-doing. What are 
called the better classes seldom offend aggressively. It 
is not-doing that is offence. It is passing by on the 
other side. It is eating meat unmindful that another 
table is furnished only with leeks." 



A ROSICRUCIAN. 221 

'*But hoeing and having?" I queried. 

**It is not easy," responded the doctor, **to know 
always just what is best to do. We are hardly to take 
our lesson from nature ; for nature, unmindful of sick or 
strong, serves those only who serve themselves. If we 
say that * Soul' is to be director, charity is found more 
often abused than made serviceable. One thing is sure, ' ' 
continued the Illuminate, "you cannot hold a man up 
that is without a backbone." 

**It comes down to the fact," I suggested, "that a 
man stands upon his own feet or does not stand at all." 

The thought passed to compensation, — thought about 
cripples, about the poor and outcast, about idiots, about 
differences between capitalist and laborer. 

"The Now of an eternal now," I suggested, "is so 
inappreciable as to duration that it is lost as instantly 
as seized. Let the duration of matter in its relation 
with a human body be considered, and it is the same. 
What a man is as to body oiie moment, that is he strictly 
not as to any other moment : truly as to body, * once 
a girl, once a boy, a bird, a bush, a fish which swims 
the sea;' to-day a cripple, to-day poor and outcast, to- 
day an idiot; compensation is with another day; this 
in the law that forever and forever turns Zenith into 
Nadir and Nadir into Zenith. Matter is eternal in its 
round of correlation. It is never at a stand-still. The 
globe itself is a round that is continuous. A man upon 
whom the sun shines at mid day is carried by his globe 
to a midnight where he has no sun. On a morrow he 
is brought out of his darkness into light." 

Everything is by turns down and up : water as the 



222 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Stream, water as the cloud, gold as nugget, gold as 
ring, acorn as seed buried in the ground, acorn as 
tree waving in the free winds of the sky, man as body- 
put into a coffin, man as Ego finding ethereal life in 
a transmigration. 

An eternal Now ! Doing ill and paying its price in 
suffering. Doing good and reaping its reward in re- 
joicing. Heaven and hell so entirely one as to loca- 
tion that the face is scorched by a hot blaze or fanned 
by a cool breeze as it happens to be turned. Suffering 
continuous or pleasure continuous; or these alternating. 
Continuous and alternating, and as well eternal, being 
neither strokes nor favors of the God, but strokes or 
favors done by men to themselves. Being one in 
meaning with an ever- existing stream, whose law allows 
of its use for irrigation or for drowning out. 

" Perfect are the mercy and beauty of the God," said 
the doctor, as he started to go home. ** And of Provi- 
dence," he turned about to add. 

It is not difficult to misunderstand a man like my 
friend. Yet alas that there are so few who have come 
to his appreciation of Providence ! His prayers reach 
from morning unto evening and into the night. 



EXCURSIONS. 

SWARTHMORE.— CHANGES AS TO THINGS AND 

MEN. 

Who that has found a laboratory for himself cares, 
or has occasion to consider, whether or not a man 
called Rosenkreuz ever existed ? 

Whether or not, to be of the guild, one must be by 
nature a Rosicrucian ? Whether or not the putting on 
of a drab coat makes a Quaker ? 

Whether it is possible, or, if possible, desirable, to 
court the alembic and to court something else at the 
same time? Whether it is well or profitable that a 
person live two lives at once ? Whether it is in accord 
with demands which belong to the day for men to 
recognize over-closely that making to themselves riches 
is necessarily increasing in poverty ? Or, that waning 
to poverty may mean waxing to wealth ? 

Whether or not others besides Rosicrucians are 

prepared to apprehend the paradox of getting camels 
through eyes of needles ? 

Swarthmore a Spiritus Sanctus ; — its peacefulness and 
restfulnessj its most Quakerly of Quaker meeting- 
houses; its imposing college dedicated to learning. 

223 



224 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



On the one hand absolute nature and simplicity; on 
the other that which is represented in the vapor of 
crucibles and by the analyses of philosophers; — all and 
everything about appealing to and exciting the Rosi- 
crucian instinct. God ! I think to myself, why does a 
man, once here, not stay forever ? 

■ Yet, on still another hand, life, as it is, and its 

duties. Remembrance, as a doctor is concerned, of 
sick men and women lying in hospitals ; the knowledge 
that by-ways and alleys are filled with people who are 
not Rosicrucian, and who do not, and perhaps cannot, 
understand. 

Here at Swarthmore, the remove of a few miles only 
from the whirl and strife and contentions of a great 
city ; here the associations which invite to meditation 
and to speculation ; here rolling fields of grass and grain 
and luscious fruits ; here clouds breaking the glare of a 
summer mid-day sun; here clouds gathering and lifting 
moisture out of damp places, flowing rain over dry 
spots. Evidence here of the mighty capability con- 
ferred on mortals. To the right of the meeting- 
house, upon the stone entrance-step of which at this 
moment I sit writing, a great seat of learning, its 
massive walls surmounted by aspiring domes. Imme- 
diately in front an observatory holding a sweeping 
glass which shows around and beyond the stars. Down 
somewhat lower the contrasting station of a railroad : 
winding tracks, swift-moving trains, busy men and 
women being carried hither and thither. 

Evidence, too, of a deliciousness living with nature. 
Right at the door of tlie meeting-house, a step only 
to the left, a clump made up of chestnut, oak, hick- 



SWARTHMORE. 225 

ory, firs, with an odd mixture of cherry-trees. The 
floor of the clump berries of the wild rose, flowers of 
golden -rod and cheerful aster, long unmown grass. 
Among the leaves music singing an seolian song, soft 
and soothing as the old stone meeting-house proves 
restful and religious. From among the golden-rod 
and asters and red berries the voices of crickets and 
katydids. Upon a great swing two jacketless college 
boys, one in a white shirt, the other in checkered blue, 
faces ruddy brown, limbs lithe and agile, throats full 
and running over with laughter, the boys swaying 
back and forth, now touching with outstretched feet 
limbs just under the sky, now sweeping the asters and 
grass and red berries j boys fresh and vital in hearts 
and muscles and nerves and bones. 

. . . Moved after a little while to another place ; 
Crura Creek lying for the moment in a deadness of 
stillness, the face of the water flecked with fallen 
leaves, the yellow faces of which tell of the nearness 
to August of autumn. Here a prostrate tree-trunk, 
mouldering and getting back into the universal. 
Chestnut burs grown a year ago, dried hemlock leaves 
breaking at a touch, withered ferns dropped over upon 
the moss beds ; a squirrel here, dead and fallen into a 
crevice of a great rock. Across the stream a triangle 
of meadow, and above this a hill-side bordered by 
hand-planted trees. Among the trees a high frame 
and the symmetrical blades of a windmill, telling 
further of man and of his conveniences. . . . Red 
leaves being dropped by sapless twigs. . . . Still song 
after song, sung by the grasshoppers, the katydids, and 
the crickets. 



226 SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 

Suddenly a quick wind coming from somewhere 



I 



beyond the brow of the hill ; acting as lash to the still 
water; driving the stream and the yellow-faced leaves; 
frightening and stilling the grasshoppers, the katydids, 
and the crickets ; twirling and casting to the ground 
dead limbs of old jungle; bringing pattering drops, 
which beat for a moment a tattoo upon the green pro- 
tecting roof overhead, and then speed in hurry under 
the arches of a near bridge. 

Chaste and restful Swarthmore ! Beautiful 

Swarthmore, seat of Quaker felicity ! Surely, saith the 
heart, " Here hath peace taken up her abiding-place." 
The Rosicrucian saith, "Here is Spiritus Sanctus." 

. . . Spiritus Sanctus ! found as well among swamps 
and brushlands of Jersey; found in silent valleys lying 
between great mountains; found where tempestuous 
waves thud ceaselessly the sand and the rock ; found 
as one wanders reflectively along a railroad track; 
found as upon the lapstone is beaten the leather ; found 
as a reader scans the proof of authors ; found as the 
farmer sows seed or gathers the harvest ; found as an 
old woman knits stockings or where decrepit men 
hobble on crutches ; found amongst illumined clouds ; 
found down in the blackness of coal-mines, — being 
within and yet without, being without and yet within. 

Changes as to Things and Men.* Not so far 
away from Swarthmore but that an hour spent upon 
a car carries to where the Brandywine and Christiana 
mingle their streams, stands a rough stone church, 

* See page 192. Also see Utopia, in " Odd Hours of a Physician." 



SWARTHMORE. 



227 



little changed externally from what it was as left by its 
builders two hundred and nine years back. A retreat, 
this, for a truant school-boy whose delight was in 
watching willow-strippers and speculating on ghosts 
rather than on Latin verbs and the matters of fact of 
physics. A sanctuary now for an old man devoted to 
meditation, to retrospection and introspection. 

How many the returns made after forty years to 
the lanes of the willow-strippers and the place of 
the ghosts, — lanes, alas ! no longer ; streets now, the 
willow fagots replaced by cobble-stones, the hawthorn 
hedges by brick-fronted houses. 

To-day, old in years and in the world's experiences, 
I am back in the graveyard. I look with saddened 
spirit and listless eye on hot streets that have taken 
the place of cool lanes. Improvements ! the new 
citizens exclaim energetically and enthusiastically. 
Perhaps ! — The new citizens ! What as to the old 
ones ? Walking through the town, for nothing of the 
village remains, I see only unfamiliar signs and faces. 
New names ! New faces ! There is large increase in 
the grave-stones. I see ! I see ! Tired out, or driven 
out, my familiars have removed. 

Forty years are more than a generation ; how 

easy to overlook this when one reckons his own years 
as a score beyond forty ! — Or is it that a generation of 
years makes understandable that there are no genera- 
tions, but that so-called end is one with beginning, — 
one end reached, beginning to a new end entered 
upon? 

The same old wall; not quite so good, how- 
ever, as in the boy days. Along the east side, sepa- 



228 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

rating ship-yard and church, the track of the railroad 

travelled over half a century back. No sight of 

remains of old Fort Christiana existing in the other 
days, nor of a moat in which the boy sailed his minia- 
ture ships. In place of fort and moat a black and 

sooty mill. Cinders and ashes where in the old time 

were grazing cows and leaning willows. — —Streets on 
all sides of the graveyard now. Strange anomaly ! 
these crowding and pushing for passage ; streets and 
people and horses and carts held in check by scat- 
tered handsful of motionless dust. 

The archways of the church covered with ivy 

vines, recognized by the gnarled trunks as being the 
acquaintances of fifty years back. The quaint cupola ; 
the same covering of cedar shingles, nailed in place 
so long, so very long ago, — shingles lasting their pur- 
pose so much better than a multitude of bodies lying 
beneath. 

The grave-digger interrupting his work to con- 
gratulate himself on the easy spading of mould made 
up of decomposed human bones, muscles, and brains. 

Here a look into the interior of the church 

through the little panes of a window. A memorial 
window in old European style seen opposite. This is 
unfamiliar ; an addition, however, well placed. Other 
changes felt as a loss. A board floor where in the 
olden days were rows of broad-faced slabs bearing 
strange-sounding Swedish names. Cold these marbles, 
no doubt, to the feet of modern worshippers ; colder to 
a returned child of the soil this floor which has the 
seeming meaning of a final shutting out. 

Little alteration in the pulpit j the same circu- 



S WAR THMORE, 229 

lar, steep steps ; the same round sounding-board \ the 
same door leading into the chancel j pews, however, in 
place of the familiar benches. 

The bell tolls : old bell ! old acquaintance ! 

this the same old bell that called to the boy when the 
vaults were to be opened. Some old trees, too ! Trees, 
good trees, — alike we are not to stand the heat and the 
sleet and the blowings and the freezings much longer ! 

But what a multitude of graves we have alike 

seen opened and filled ! How I have slept in your 
shade and you have fanned me ! How I have climbed 
into your highest limbs and you have pointed out the 
distant valleys and streams ! How we are life-long 
friends, even though at one time years passed without 
a meeting ! How, old trees, I love you, and now kiss 
you! 

This a Jack-in-the-pulpit growing out of a well- 
remembered grave. Preach me, occupier of a pulpit 
from whom to expect a lesson is a right ! Tell of the 
spirit of the old friend out of whose body you grow, — 
if, indeed, you know anything more than he whose 
root is not yet in a grave. How well the name and 
the person are remembered ! A grand eulogy this 
borne by his marble ! There must have been some 
rich friend to rear such a stone. It was a derisive 
saying of the villagers that the man held the penny so 
near his eye as not to be able to see the dollar in the 
distance. — Wiser I now think him than his critics. 
Pennies satisfied him. His life was serenely slipshod. 

You direct attention to the mound across the 

path. You are right ! the occupant was indeed rich, 
powerful, — and a brute. I recall him fully : an old, 

20 



230 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



gray-haired, tottering man. It was here, was it, that 
he tumbled finally? Let me, preacher, of myself 
question. How was it, brute ? How was it when the 
passions were replaced by compelled quiet existing in 
a palsy that came to you ? How was it when were not 
to be remedied helplessness and hopelessness arising 
out of indiscretions ? Before your body got into the 
grave, what was seen of the meaning of these mis- 
takes? or did you drop into the pit without under- 
standing of who and what dug the hole? I lay a 
sheet of paper, man, upon your slab. Here, ready, is 
pen filled with ink. Is there aught to say to a sinner 
like yourself in the way of consolation or extenuation, 
or — warning? anything but that a "dead past is to 
bury its dead" ? 

Wonderful ! wonderful ! You have been here 

summer after summer, preacher. How deep was the 
body buried ? Your earth must be porous, that I find 
so much of this man gotten out of the ground into 
myself! 

"Turn to the other path," you say. Sadly 

pleasing indeed. Copy what is graven, pen. "John 
Stephens," — whoever he was, or is. 

" Delusive life, adieu, with all thy train 
Of folly, labor, care, regret, and pain ; 
Existence but an animated clod. 
Death sinks the frame and mounts the soul to God." 

'* And Rebecca his wife. 

Dark, silent grave, low in thy narrow bed, 
Weeping, we lay the body of our dead : 
All that was mortal now hath ceased to live, 
And all that earth can claim to earth we give." 



SWARTHMORE. 231 

Lines between lines here: preacher, Christian, or 
simple philosopher, alike may write and can use them. 

Here by the church-door eight graves. Upright 
marbles tell the names of honest yeomen of the old 
school and of the honest yeomen's helpmates. One 
was well known. How often, preacher, have I clam- 
bered his fences, eaten of the fruits of his fields, and 
fished in streams running through his grounds ! The 
gravestone tells of the burying as being in the year 
1840. Why, preacher, I remember the funeral as if it 
had been an occurrence of but yesterday. Half a 
century ago ! Preacher, preacher, there is not over- 
width of margin between the years of half a century 
and threescore and ten ! 

From the grave of the farmer I start for a walk to 
his home of fifty years back, having keenly in memory 
a densely-shaded lane quite half a mile in length lead- 
ing from the highway to the house j a double avenue of 
old and gnarled apple-trees, a carriage-house at one 
end and a great stone barn together with hay-ricks 
at the other ; and, most vividly remembered of all, a 
watering-place where the horses were ridden bareback 
to drink. With what zest I am thinking of the water- 
ing-place; a fordable stream, clear as crystal, some 
twenty feet in breadth, a sandy shore on one side, on 
the other massive rocks smothered in vines which reach 
over them into the stream. Above, the great branches 
of lovingly embracing trees, their branchlets floated by 
the water; squirrel-holes in the trunks of the trees, 
where the boy risked the bite of snakes for the pos- 
sible prize of a flying rodent. 



232 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

The steps hasten as the sylvan scenes are recalled. 
How generous and profuse was the hospitality ! How 
untrammelled was the freedom ! How the horses, led 
from their stable unsaddled and unbridled, and often 
enough unmounted by boys too timid or not agile 
enough, are this moment in mind ! Then the heir of 
the house ! As full of hospitality as were the father 
and mother ; full of pride and of the aspirations of 
youth; overflowing with desire to do; rich in the 
cherry-red blood of health ; afraid of nothing ; tender 
of the feelings of others as a woman ; the admired and 
beloved of his neighborhood ; a valued friend of early 
days. 

. . . The lane ! What is this ? A railroad-track. 
A bank of clay in place of the shading trees. Half- 
rotten ties lying promiscuously about, occupying the 
places of long-ago-familiar moss carpeted big stones. 
At the foot of a tree standing at junction of road 
and lane, whilom the gathering-place of cawing crows, 
now a caboose of a flagman ; the top of the tree cut 
off, the trunk serving as a post to the cabin. A great 
square rock standing by the tree at the entrance of the 
lane and reaching beyond the fence into the wood, — a 
favorite rest of fifty years back. Not a sign of this 
remaining. Broken by the blasters, no doubt, and 
now lying in the mud under some road-bridge. 

How profound a revulsion of feeling ! Is change 
also with the old house and with the watering-place? 
Shall I go forward, or turn back? 

. . . Not a vestige remaining of the apple trees ; no 
single fence in place as it used to be. Another barn, 
facing in opposite direction from the old one. No 



SWARTHMORE. 



233 



sign of hay-ricks. Streets making their way from 
every direction. No lane leading from barn-yard to 
watering-place. 

. . . The watering-place found, after considerable 
search. Not an overhanging tree remaining. No 
sandy shore. No vine-covered rocks. Up and down 
everything of the old days found gone or going. The 
stream narrowed by the encroachments of the rail- 
road to a ditch between clay banks only a few feet in 
width. The sun unobstructed glaring to-day on these 
clay banks. The beautiful stream of old nothing to- 
day but a run carrying sewage. 

*' Improvements" ! The word has got here from the 
town. Things called "improvements" in proportion 
as they deform and destroy ! Mud-covered railroad- 
ties in place of vine-bedecked rocks. Flat clay banks 
replacing arboring trees. Odor of the wild grape and 
honeysuckle driven away by smell of garbage. 

. . . The house the home of a new race. The 
name of the farmer of fifty years ago unknown. Not 
the slightest memory of boys who belonged there as 
visitors half a century back. Not a black face where 
once were plenty. No wide-throated chimney holding 
benches of stone on either side of blazing logs. No 
brick-paved kitchen. No door going into a familiar 
pantry. No anything as it was. 

. . . Building-lots now in place of arbored lane 
and the watering-place. Yard-palings, already break- 
ing down, where in old days were stone fences under 
which the ground-squirrels lived and over which they 
ran. Houses of wood, flaring in white and green, 
where once waved corn-tassels and the heavy heads 
20* 



234 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



of wheat-Stalks. Strange people sauntering about, evi- 
dently at home, and looking on the walker as an in- 
truder. Alas ! 

*' Places that knew us know us no more." — And what 
if they do not ? I turn my steps toward what is of great 
contrast to the place of lanes and watering-place. The 
old house, whilom so inviting, is contracted and un- 
comfortable when compared with one that has its door 
standing open for me. In the olden time I knew 
nothing of the new home, nor dreamed even of its 
attractions ; the stone house at the end of the lane was 
a palace. The talks of willow-strippers, rude and low^ 
as now recalled, were attractions stronger than the 
voices of teachers in the village school. Islanders, 
coming in with the whaling-ships, half savages as they 
were, made impressions something of which stays, no 
doubt, as remain India-ink stains pricked by them 
with needles into the skin of my hands. Negro fisher- 
men ! How many could be named who were close 
friends in the olden times ! What wonderful springy 
poles and what unbreakable snoods were prepared 
by these for our days among the ditches ! Gone ! 
islanders and negroes ! Whaling-ships rotted to 
pieces ! Anchors seen by the creek-side so turned 
into rust as to be valueless even as iron ! The ditches 
gone ! 

... I sit down in the new home as I reach it and 
lose myself in confusion and wonderment at the self- 
gratulation felt that I am no longer of the old save as 
I choose to go back to it. I retrospect, finding it to 
be thus with all my experiences. New is found better 



SWARTHMORE. 235 

than old ; that is, as adaptation to wants relates ; houses 
for increase of people. Going forward is going on- 
ward ; unless, as I am compelled to see, one will insist 
on going backward. Both forward and backward in 
the Now, however ; nowhere else. The graveyard, and 
the farm, and the farmer, and the fisherman, and the 
boy, all here. New trees for the graveyard and farm, 
new bodies for the humans. 

... If the All were understood? Happiest of 
happy was the boy in the days of the willow-stripping 
and the ditch-fishing. To-day the strippers are with- 
out interest to the man. The ditches are distinguish- 
able alone by lines of ashes with which they have been 
filled. But in the olden time little was seen of mean- 
ness living with the strippers, nor did doubt exist as to 
an eternal continuance lying with the ditches. In 
the olden time the mortal needed no better heaven 
than what he had. 

Referring to differences between past and present, 
or (is it not better said ?) to successions in the Eternal 
Now, memory is had of hesitation and drawing back 
when a trip to a distant country was to be entered 
upon. Firmness as to land was not to be doubted. 
Instability as to water had its record of multitudinous 
misadventures. But — when the sea was reached ! when 
was heard the wild music of the wind screeching by 
the sailless masts! when the up-liftings and the down 
tumblings of the driving waves were felt ! when the 
salt- laden air filled the lungs with life ! when that which 
was behind changed from immensity into a speck, and 
that which was before loomed up as a continent filled 



236 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

with wonders ! Ah ! here glory lying with courage 
and vigor becomes understood. 

Memories of these things. Memories contrasted. 

Memories of Heidelberg and its tun ; of the Neckar 
running from the hill-land to the flat-land; of the 
watching of duels in the Angelplatz ; of the pledging 
in great tankards the health of Kaiser and President. 
Memories of a Righi Culm and of its neighbor peaks 
encased in silver and gold. Memories of break-neck 
speed in the rolling of diligences as chains gave way 
in the declines of the Brlinig. Memories of jerking, 
driving waves met at the exit from Dieppe. Memo- 
ries of blinding sprays in the English Channel. 
Memories of evening sun-rays reddening the white 
cliffs of Albion. Memories of Brighton ablaze with 
excitement in the presence of royal personages, and 
memories of the spurring and prodding of racing 
horses at Lewes. Memories of Scotch hills and of 
mist-covered lochs. Memories of the Rhine as fol- 
lowed from the bleak North Sea to the dancing, leap- 
ing, laughing waters at Neuhausen. Memories of the 
ice-Alps as seen from the streets of sweltering Zurich. 
Memories of Lucerne and of long trout discovered in 
the crystal clearness of the Lake of the Four Cantons. 
Memories of Lausanne and of midnight moon-rays 
covering the face of Leman. Memories of snow-garbed 
Jungfrau contrasting with the surrounding greenness 
of summer-time. 

Thoughts aroused by these contrasts as to greater 
contrasts. A condition of environment considered 
where lighter mounts over heavier to a higher plane of 
equilibrium. Higher reached, higher seen still above. 



SWARTHMORE. 



237 



From lower to higher forever and forever. Soon a 
plane reached where change is understood as one with 
freshness ; where change becomes courted as the scholar 
courts acquisitions to his treasures of knowledge. 
Sensible change understood as associated alone with 
body, and body understood as clothes, — heavy clothes 
for winter, light clothes for summer, intermediate 
clothes for intermediate seasons. Matter cloth, Nature 
a tailor. 

Back to the Town. Upon a luxurious lounge, 
pillows of embroidered silken cushions under and about 
her, lies, stricken by disease pronounced fatal, one 
upon whom Refinement is seen to have set its divinest 
mark and Beauty to have competed with Grace for her 
adornment. With beginning were lessons after the 
strictest rules of the sects. Later the earth was travelled 
almost all over. The foot of her camel imprinted its 
steps upon the desert-sand; her dahabiyeh winged its 
way to old places where mystery had tarried along the 
banks of the Nile. India introduced her to Brahma. 
China brought her to acquaintance with Confucius. 
The shores of the Bosphorus gave her audience with 
Mahomet. 

Bringing the new gods home with her, and their 
bibles, and finding still later gods and bibles wher- 
ever the good and beautiful were beholdable, — and, 
contrariwise, seeing perdition and devils wherever the 
bad and ugly were predominant, — Cordona found re- 
ligion in losing sect. 

Coming to her lounge-side to-night bringing with 
me the experiences and feelings of the day, I meet with 



238 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

readiness and interest question propounded by her on 
the meaning of death; a word which she corrects, 
however, as quickly as uttered, by replacing it with the 
term "change." 

I speak to her of the wanderings of the day, telling 
her that the things were once the very life of my life, 
but that they have dwindled and have waned to large 
divestment of the old-time charms, and that to-night I 
am rejoicing as one finding himself brought to higher 
possessions and pleasures through change. 

"But," interrupts Cordona, "the old place knows 
you, and you know the old place." 

"Put it after this manner," I suggest. "I know 
the old place, but the old place does not know me, — 
nor do I care about the old place knowing me. As 
for the willow-strippers and the fishermen, I am some- 
thing so entirely different from their acquaintance of 
old that neither they nor I would any longer find con- 
geniality as to the other's company; neither would 
have satisfaction or pleasure in a remeeting. The new 
people pass me as indifferently as I pass them. We 
are nothing at all to each other. Each, however, is 
much or all to the place of each and to the friends of 
each." 

"Accepting immortality as a fact," asks Cordona, 
not fairly catching my idea, " what are your convic- 
tions regarding intercourse of the so-called newly dead 
with those that have passed along before? You are 
dead to the old place, but you are as well alive to it to 
live in it if you want to." 

" Immortality and acceptance are words without 
association," I beg to correct. "Knowledge of exist- 



SWARTHMORE. 



^39 



ence in the Now is knowledge of existence forever. 
As I go back now to the old place, so forever and for- 
ever shall I go back to where I want to go back. The 
want changes, however. Little by little old enters into 
new. Little by little, out of such reason, are the at- 
tractions of the old changed and lost. Do I walk 
through my native village, what are the new signs over 
new shops, and the new keepers of the shops, to me ? 
A door once open to me is now fast shut. Salutations, 
once warm and frequent, are now formal and infre- 
quent, as to a stranger. There is no house across the 
lane that invites me. Though entertainment reside 
with every home, there is no invitation to me. Nor is 
there with me slightest desire for invitation or enter- 
tainment. I have all I want of this, and more to my 
taste, elsewhere." 

"And you can make," asks Cordona, "such nat- 
ural associations, confident that application is alike to 
spiritual matters?" 

"If," I query, "natural and spiritual are found to 
be one, would the association apply ?' * 

"Undoubtedly," answers Cordona. 

"This, then," I reply, "is a oneness so absolutely 
self-proving that conclusion is reached as certainly as 
examination is made."* 

" You make it nothing at all to die?" says Cordona. 

" Nothing at all is the word," I reply, "as there is 
no death." 

A slight paleness passes over Cordona's face as she 
hints at the grave. 

* See body of the book. 



240 



SPJRITUS SANCTUS. 



*' What," I ask, "if a body, out of which Ego has 
gone, be left lying upon a bed ? What is the body to 
Ego? or what is Ego to the body?" I hint to her of 
the bodies seen in dissecting-rooms. *' No one thinks 
of these," I suggest, ** but as something worn out and 
offensive that is to be got rid of. It would be inter- 
esting," I add, ''to note the effect made on an Ego 
come to a dissecting-room in search of an old body. 
Beholding self possessed of body, precisely as under- 
stood in the dream-state, the mass lying upon the slab 
would be to him, before all others, a thing to be buried 
out of sight; a greasy and worn thrown-off suit of 
clothes would not be less to him." I remind Cordona 
of a locust gotten out of its old hull. ** How curiously 
it must look at the shell !" I say. 

" It certainly is the case," replies Cordona, " that the 
hull has little interest for the locust, as hardly so much 
as a look is bestowed before the insect flies away." 

"It leaves its old body," I suggest, "just as the 
body of the boy was unconcernedly^indeed, unknow- 
ingly — left with the stones of the old graveyard and 
with the ditches where himself and the blackamoors 
fished ; two bodies, indeed, as for fourteen years he 
was among the gravestones and about the ditches.* 
Seven bodies more, used and parted from," I add. 
"A body for every seven years." 

"As to these nine bodies ?" queries Cordona. 

*Not the expense of a single funeral gone to. 
Nature turned undertaker, plus excess of wit to make 
it understood that she was burying nothing, but help- 

* See page 194, 



S WAR THMORE. 241 

ing kindly, on the contrary, her loves out of old dresses 
into new." 

**Has a grave or a funeral nothing disagreeable 
about it to you?" asks the invalid. 

"When I see either," I reply, ** I am reminded of 
one who has removed and whose friends insist that 
the rubbish left shall be packed away in a storehouse." 

"You are unqualifiedly without regard for body?" 
queries Cordona. 

" Yes, and no," I answer. " While my hair is orna- 
mental, I comb and care for it. When it grows over- 
long, I go to the barber, not concerned as to where he 
throws what he cuts off. My dentist showed me the 
other day a front tooth extracted years ago from my 
mouth and valued beyond price in the by-gone days. 
I looked on it with interest, but without slightest rec- 
ognition of it as of concern to myself. I did think, 
however, as the man put the tooth back in a box filled 
with malodorous specimens of similar character, that 
while this being a first tooth which had been replaced 
by a better and bigger was without use to me, yet 
there was a kind of pity for the tooth that it should 
so long have been denied its right of transmigration 
by reason of being kept in a box instead of in the 
earth." 

"Transmigration?" queries Cordona. 

" Yes, transmigration. Put into the earth, the tooth 
would have been nothing different from a seed that 
lifts itself as the flower. Going back whence it came, 
a new tooth, or something as useful, would be found as 
result of a thing made over." 

"Ego is not a thing of hair or teeth?" says Cor- 
j. q 21 



242 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS, 



dona. " Nothing is more clearly demonstrable than 
this." 

** A trap holds a mouse," I suggest, *' so long as the 
door is shut. The door opened, the mouse is away. 
Body is a trap holding for its purpose the Ego until 
accident opens the door. Ego away, what is done 
with its trap is of as little concern to it as is the trap 
to a liberated mouse." 

" What as to Ego?" queries Cordona. 

*'I think," I reply, *'that the question finds its an- 
swer, as when asked of Ego residing with its trap. It 
does, or it goes, or it stays, as it finds itself able. Let 
it be put," I suggest, "somewhat differently, — after 
this manner, for example. To-night I am going to 
sleep. To-night I shall lie upon my bed, dead as to the 
uses of body. To-morrow, the body being refreshed 
sufficiently for fresh work, I shall take it up for the 
purpose of its intentions, going about as I like or doing 
whatever is found demanding doing. It will be ex- 
actly the same as to the going about and doing if body 
fails to wake up. I, which is no more the body that 
lies upon the bed than the body is I, would enter upon 
the occupancy of new body, and this so entirely with- 
out consciousness of change that dreaming is one with 
its accomplishment. Miscomprehension is with re- 
fusing the lesson of the dream-state. There is but 
one Matter. Body is Matter. A dream, and the capa- 
bility associated with it as the uses of Ego are con- 
cerned, show body as Universal body in the sense 
that Matter is Universal matter. Matter is instantane- 
ously and everlastingly, and after the manner needed, 
at the command of Ego as Ego requires it." 



SWARTHMORE. 243 

"A common seed," suggests Cordona, '*has similar 
command of matter?" 

** Similar precisely, even if the manner is slower. 
Intermediates between an acorn, which has about the 
slowest command, and a man, that has the highest, are 
to be instanced in the vines which sometimes draw 
upon matter for their use after such rapid manner 
that growth is to be measured by the hour." 

** Bodies and graves and funerals are not the con- 
cern?" says Cordona. 

**Only as is concerned making up a bank-account, 
as where one about to travel wishes to leave conve- 
niences to those who may not be going, or settling 
what is to be done with a trap." 

**Ah," interrupts Cordona, " here it is ! this going 
away !" 

'* Going away," I reply, " or staying, as one feels like 
it. Nothing at all different from staying with or get- 
ting away from the people of the old farm. Ego goes 
away from his house with the funeral of thrown- off 
refuse which is without interest or concern to Ego, or 
stays at home and lets the funeral go." 

** But not seen or heard by friends as they come back 
from the funeral," suggests Cordona. 

** Seeing and hearing, however," I reply. "Others 
alone, not ourselves, conscious that things are anyway 
different from what they were. Something more. 
Different and not different. A gradual awakening to 
the possession of new capabilities. The coming, little 
by little, to something akin with that which has effected 
painless separation of the truant school-boy, the willow- 
strippers, and the fishermen ; pleasurable separation." 



244 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 



"But how," queries Cordona, "as to again being 
seen and heard, as well as to seeing and hearing?" 

" The law is with like knowing like. Like seeks its 
like. Unlike changes sooner or later into like. Noth- 
ing is done by nature abruptly. We do not know 
when we are born. We do not know when we are 
unborn." 

"Unborn?" queries Cordona. 

"Yes, unborn. Being unborn continuously. Your- 
self unborn as to several bodies and not able to say a 
word as to particulars related with the dates; know- 
ing, indeed, nothing about the matter. Yourself to go 
on being unborn with view to being reborn so long as 
an Eternal Now shall last; consequently, forever and 
forever." 

"Stature suited to condition," says Cordona. 

"Exactly: stature suited to condition, and condi- 
tion to circumstances." 

" I am so much a citizen of the world," says Cor- 
dona, " that often enough, on return from trips abroad, 
the street and house where I now am have seemed 
gloomy and cheerless." 

"And often enough you have run away from them 
for sake of still newer associations?" 

" Often enough," replies Cordona. 

" God is good. An indigent girl's dematerializa- 
tion is one with your money; both alike carry 
where one may wish to go. Given time enough, 
one grows tired of a thing, of everything. Change 
is one with newness. Newness is winter made over 
into spring. Not to stay still, but to go on and on, 
is life." 



S WAR THMORE. 245 

*'True," says Cordona j "moved into a new house, 
how often is it the case that a visit to the old one 
causes wonder that its inconveniences could have been 
endured !" 

"I think that a locust must feel just that way/' I 
say, *' when he takes a look at his old house, the shell." 

Cordona asks me to repeat an experience of a sum- 
mer now some time ago, which I do, adding to it 
something she had not heard. 

The place was Barnegat shore. The night was black 
and fitful, occasional flashes of lightning showing 
ghostly-looking hills of sand rising abruptly from the 
edge of the beating tide. Protected from the storm, I 
sat looking from the window of a lonely-situated house 
near by, the thought coming to me as to the utter 
dreariness of a burial that should leave a man in such 
a place. A horrible fascination held me in my seat 
until after midnight. To break away from the loneli- 
ness and dreariness seemed impossible. I pictured to 
myself a stranger, who had left the sweetest and fairest 
of associations on the other side of the great sea, 
coming to this side and being caught in the treacher- 
ous shoals, drowned and washed against one of these 
hills, and covered out of sight by the shifting sand : 
no answer left for the question. Where ? I im- 
agined this stranger lying in his wet bed night after 
night through the stormy seasons of countless winters. 
Before my eyes was a cenotaph in some Stoke Poges or 
other of the primrose-scented God's-acres of England. 
In my ears was the sound of crackling logs upon a 
home hearth, — his home hearth. About both, the un- 
answered question, Where ? 
21* 



246 SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

Next night myself lay buried in the sand-hill. The 
fascination had been too powerful to be resisted. 
One of a number of self-burials was made. In a 
hole dug in the hill the next morning were deposited 
portions of all that a doctor knows of his bodily self; 
portions of hair, of nails, of skin, of spittle which is 
one with blood, of oil, lubricating the scalp, which a 
moment earlier was a gland, of sweat brought to the 
surface by other internal bodies ; in short, a doctor get- 
ting himself from himself. 

Next night was not, however, as last night. The 
moon was shining brilliantly. Sultriness was replaced 
by a cooling breeze. There were no lightning-flashes, 
nor storm, nor thud of merciless waves against the 
sand-hills. The looker sat again at the window, 
looking this time at his grave in the sand-hill ; medi- 
tating, not on dreariness, but cognizant of two selves; 
indifferent, utterly, as to the grave in the sand-hill; 
indifferent as to whether it should wash away or re- 
main ; indifferent as to winter's thuds of waves and 
summer's flashes of lightning. The something in the 
sand-hill was something that could be got along with- 
out. The spell was broken in understanding that a 
sand-hill cannot bury a man. 

What had not been told Cordona was that, going a 
week later to the grave, it was found filled with crickets 
and their progeny. Not a sign of what had been 
buried was there. In a single week a resurrection had 
taken place. 

Writing out the incident brings to mind illustration 
of unconscious separation as to Ego and body, not 



SWARTHMORE, 247 

alone as this relates with the ordinary physiological 
change that is continuously going on, but as regard 
is with speedy disassociation. 

The point is that so-called death relates with con- 
scious loss of body by Ego only slowly and by degrees ; 
this, as change of stature from boy to man is slow 
and by degrees and unconsciously. The illustration 
is the familiar experience of surgery that amputation 
of a limb or limbs made when a patient is uncon- 
scious by reason of anaesthesia is without knowledge 
of the patient as to the loss when he awakens if he be 
denied sight of the stump or stumps. So long as the 
parts remain covered, the limb or limbs are felt in 
place as before their removal. Some people are years 
in getting clear of amputated limbs. 

It is not different as to full dismemberment. Being 
unborn is, as to consciousness, one with being born. 
Infancy waxes to youth, youth to manhood. New 
takes the place of old so gradually and continuously 
that man has no date as to a metamorphosis into 
angel or devil. Death and resurrection are not two 
conditions, but one. Now is continuous. Life is con- 
tinuous. Change is continuous. 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 

"Whatsoe'er thou lovest, that become thou must; 
God if thou lovest God, dust if thou lovest dust." 

The heights of some men are the depths of other men. 

The lines of the Illuminate epitomize the book here 
come of itself to a conclusion while the pages are as 
excursions on the lines of the philosopher: Spiritus 
Sanctus is before the reader. 

The general and special analyses which signify the 
excursions making evident the indisputable truth that 
man by reason of his hypostases is of such relation 
with the Universal as to permit his being where and 
what he wants to be, the question of life shows itself as 
question of selection. Here other epitome offers itself 
in the injunction, *' Choose ye this day whom ye will 
serve," and in the added one, '* Ye cannot serve two 
masters.*' 

The God leaves no man without evidences. There 
is no mountain so high nor valley so deep but what 
voice is to be heard as one crying in the wilderness. 
The lines of the poet are not too familiar for place on 
wall of hovel or palace. 

" tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones." 

Here, to the Illuminate, as attempted to be por- 
trayed in the pages, is the God's tryst ; — not less nor 
248 



SPIRITUS SANCTUS. 249 

more, however, than found with the simple meeting- 
place of the Quaker, the synagogue of the Jew, the 
joss-house of the heathen, the ritualistic church of 
Episcopalianism, or the formalistic cathedral of 
Romanism. 

Height and depth have no other measure than com- 
parison ; this alike as to hills and men. Height as to 
men is not necessarily education, nor is depth absence 
of it. Distinction between wisdom and knowledge 
holds the measuring-rod. The front brain may be 
credited, if one pleases, with being a storehouse hold- 
ing much or little of gatherings, and the back brain 
may be allowed its office of co-ordinator of organic 
relations, but wisdom, save as relation is with the lower 
planes of life, is with neither the details of storehouse 
nor the possibilities of cerebellum, but is, as illuminated 
men know, with Soul. 

God is highest. To be God is to be highest. 
Water-drops being ocean by reason of being with 
ocean, men being God by reason of being with 
God. 

Oh ! the God ! the God ! Giver of everything. 

Withholder of nothing. God who will show himself 
face to face to men like Plotinus. God who opens a 
road of Induction that the Soul-lacking may not be 
without knowledge of him. Beheld as Giver after 
such simple and easily appreciated manner as shows 
hoeing to be one with having. Nothing complicated. 
Nothing mysterious. Nothing requiring grandeur or 
extent, as to external. Slaves the equals of kings. 
All and everything internal. Heaven, hell, and inter- 
mediate internal. Heaven, hell, or intermediate to 



250 SPIRTTUS SANCTUS. 

be lived in as man discovers or leaves undiscovered 
the meaning of heaven, hell, and intermediate. Oh, 
Being of beings, before whom the mouth seeks the dust 
in its despair of words to name him ! Entity too stu- 
pendous, too unthinkable as to personality, for a name ! 

The end of the intention of the book is reached. 
What the pages prove to a reader is with the reader. 

Men, holders-on to brass where gold abounds ; 
Crawlers, refusing flight where wings are offered. 



THE END. 



I 










Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 



